Re: update-pam and update-nsswitch

[Petter Reinholdtsen <pere@hungry.com>]

[Sam Hartman]
> That said, Debian policy forbids one package from touching another
> package's configuration files without the permission of that other
> package.

I thought it forbid one packages _maintainer scripts_ from touching
another package's conffiles.  Looking in the policy, I find this:

  10.7.4 Sharing configuration files

  Packages which specify the same file as a conffile must be tagged as
  conflicting with each other. (This is an instance of the general
  rule about not sharing files. Note that neither alternatives nor
  diversions are likely to be appropriate in this case; in particular,
  dpkg does not handle diverted conffiles well.)

  The maintainer scripts must not alter a conffile of any package,
  including the one the scripts belong to.

Is this the rule you are refering to?  It seem to allow one package to
include scripts updating another packages conffiles as long as these
scripts are not called from the maintainer scripts.