Splitting dselect from dpkg -- acceptable plan?

[Nathanael Nerode <neroden@fastmail.fm>]

OK.  So I managed to construct a dselect source package which builds
independently of dpkg.  It required duplicating substantial portions of
lib/ .  I intend that to be temporary.  Until those portions are gone,
I will keep an eye on any changes made to lib/ in dpkg.

My plan for dselect is to make dselect more fully based on apt, which 
should incidentally allow the removal/replacement of much of that code; 
but to add the build-deps needed, dselect has to become an independent 
package *first*.

Is this an acceptable future path for dselect?  Is the temporary forking 
of libdpkg considered acceptable? (One alternative is to make a real,
shared libdpkg, but looking at it I don't really think that's a good 
idea.)

If this is an acceptable transition path, I will polish up the new 
dselect package (initially with no significant code differences) and we 
can arrange for an appropriately coordinated upload; from then on 
dselect and dpkg can evolve separately.

Let me know.  Replies to bug trail and/or list please.