Tell Launchpad what DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS to use when building PPA package

When I generate and upload source packages to my PPA, what's the best way to pass DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS that Launchpad will use when building binary versions of the package?

In particular, I want to pass in the "nodocs" option so that the documentation isn't built.

The PPAs do not have a way to specify an environment variables (including DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS) unfortunately. Until they do, you will need to edit the debian/rules file and set it manually yourself near the top (but not the first line if it uses a "#!"):

DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=nodocs

Optionally, just find the section of the rules file that looks for "nodocs" and change it to do what you need it to do.