Does anyone use checkinstall instead of "make install" in order to build a xine-lib debian package?
This is not the right way to build a debian package, it is a dirty hack. All the files that are necessary for building a debian package are already there if you check xine-lib-1.2 out using 'hg clone http://hg.debian.org/hg/xine-lib/xine-lib-1.2'. With 'debuild -uc -us -rfakeroot' in the xine-lib-1.2 directory, the xline-lib gets compiled and you have debian packages afterwords one directory up. At least this is the way I build my ubuntu packages for xine-lib with vdpau patches.
Gerald