diff --git a/debian/source/options b/debian/source/options
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..d107d50f5147f9c497b29311f6eb331efe6def78
--- /dev/null
+++ b/debian/source/options
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+# We want to keep *.so files, so we manually list what to ignore
+# to overrides the default values
+tar-ignore = .git
+tar-ignore = .gitignore
+