From:  foo@debian.org
To:    bar@upstream.org
Subject: [foobar package] GNU config issues with your program

Bar,

I have recently updated the config.sub and config.guess (aka GNU config) files
in the Debian packaging of foobar. The ones you include are too old, and cause
build failures in many architetures.

Unfortunately, by design, these two files must be kept up-to-date. In Debian we
have a maintainer and a package tracking the GNU config CVS, as well as some
automated scripts to update packages from master copies;  However, since most
people are not aware of the problem with old GNU config files, I thought I
should notify you of the issue, just in case.

Up-to-date GNU config files are available through anonymous CVS pserver access.
To fetch them, one could use:

cvs -z 4 -d :pserver:anoncvs@subversions.gnu.org:/cvsroot/config \
export -rHEAD config

Your downstream Debian maintainer,
foo

-- 
  Witty anti-Microsoft sign goes here
