Bug#533287: debian-policy: please clarify 10.7.4

[Sune Vuorela <reportbug@pusling.com>]

Package: debian-policy
Version: 3.8.1.0
Severity: important


Hi

There has recently on #debian-devel been a few discussions about wether
it was allowed to edit other packages configuration files 
(not 'conffiles') in maintainer scripts.

My interpretation of policy is that you are only allowed to edit other
packages configure files thru a specific provided interface (e.g. update-inetd),
and if a package don't offer such a interface, you aren't allowed.

Some people seems to claim that you are allowed to do sed/cat/echo/perl
magic on other packages configuration files in maintainerscripts if you 
really need it and there is no provided interface.

I would like to get the wording clarified so that it is either fully
permitted or, in my preference, clearly not allowed.

/Sune
-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'stable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-1-686 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=en_DK.ISO-8859-15, LC_CTYPE=en_DK.ISO-8859-15 (charmap=ISO-8859-15)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

debian-policy depends on no packages.

debian-policy recommends no packages.

Versions of packages debian-policy suggests:
ii  doc-base                      0.9.2      utilities to manage online documen

-- no debconf information