I use the quilt utility to manage changes to the project’s source code and to maintain the version of the deb package into which it is built. I encountered a problem – some source code files were added to the project before me, as symbolic links to other files of the same project (in other directories).
At the moment I need to convert one of these symlinks into a regular file. BUT when I try to add these changes to the patch, quilt writes that Failed to add a symbolic link I’ve searched all over Google but haven’t found a solution to my problem, please help. Thank you in advance!

Here is a small example for better understanding

src
|..
├folder1
| |
| └symlink
|
├folder2
| |
| └original_file
..

$ quilt new test.diff
$ quilt add /src/folder1/symlink
$ Failed to add a symbolic link /src/folder1/symlink

I tried using dpkg-source --commit . (name).patch instead of quilt, but the result is almost the same, I can’t build the deb package because I get an error –

dpkg-source: error: failed to submit change to /src/folder1/symlink:
dpkg-source: error: new version simple file
dpkg-source: error: old version symlink to ../folder1/symlink
dpkg-source: error: uncharacteristic changes in source

I also tried to cheat the system a little. I first created a patch without adding changes to the patch, removed the symbolic link and replaced it with a regular file, then added changes to the patch using the quilt edit command, it worked correctly, but when building the package I again received an error – dpkg-source: error: uncharacteristic changes in source

I also found information about the quilt configuration file (/etc/quilt.quiltrc) and tried to experiment with the QUILT_PATCH_OPTS parameter by adding the -E key. But this did not give any results