Can somebody explain what is meant by code source tree

I am trying to build a deb package from source code. when I run:

debuild -b -uc -us

From the source code directory I get:

debuild: fatal error at line 679:
cannot find readable debian/changelog anywhere!
Are you in the source code tree?

Also there is this:

trey@focal:~/freac-1.1.3$ dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -b -uc -us
dpkg-buildpackage: error: cannot open file debian/changelog: No such file or directory

I do not understand what is happening.

1 Answer

PARTIAL ANSWER

FWIW, with respect to the

debuild: fatal error at line 679:
cannot find readable debian/changelog anywhere!
Are you in the source code tree?

squawk, I've found that, in many cases, installing the fakeroot package prevents said squawk from occurring...