packages with hook interfaces and no documented hook policy

[Bjørn Mork <bjorn@mork.no>]

After discovering two different unrelated packages abusing the pm-utils
hooks, I started wondering if there are any generic guidance wrt such
hooks.  

Can any package just provide the hook directories it want without an
explicit policy?  And can any package provide hooks in such directories,
even if there is no policy for its usage?  Does it make any difference
if the hooks are configuration files?

My claim is that packages like unattended-upgrades and pm-utils are
completely unrelated to each other, and that a hook in
unattended-upgrades which breaks pm-utils by preventing hibernation is a
critical bug, even if the breakage seems intentional.

But i may be wrong.  Maybe it's OK to break any package with a hook
interface and no policy for its usage, as the package itself then has
provided the necessary infrastructure for breaking it?


Thanks,
Bjørn