Override dir-or-file-in-opt

Question

I maintain a commercial, binary package for debian, ubuntu, & etc. and have gotten complaints about "bad package quality" from the Ubuntu installer. The root cause of this appears to be that the package installs files in the /opt and /etc/opt directories which apparently throws lintian into a hissy fit. As I understand the purpose of these directories, they are meant to serve the needs of "Add-on" applications although I have yet to see any definition of what "add-on" is supposed to mean. I have attempted to create a lintian override file for my package in the /usr/share/lintian/overrides directory and, when I do so, I get the following report from Lintian:

N: Some overrides were ignored, since the tags were marked "non-overridable".
N: The following tags were "non-overridable" and had at least one override
N:   - dir-or-file-in-opt

Is there any way around this apparent obstinacy?

Answer 1

If you're using debhelper to build your package, lintian overrides for the binary packages should go in the debian folder with the filename [package].lintian-overrides. This ensures the overrides make it into the proper directory on package installation. (For source packages, overrides go in the file debian/source/lintian-overrides.)

That said, short of not putting your files in /opt, I'm not sure there's a way to completely get rid of the dir-or-file-in-opt lintian complaint. Though, I'm not sure it's necessary since, to my knowledge, the ubuntu/aptdaemon lintian profile (which disables the dir-or-file-in-opt tag) is used in most of the situations in which lintian would be run automatically during/before package installation. That's probably not quite the answer you were hoping for, but I hope it's helpful nonetheless!

Sources:
Debian New Maintainers' Guide, section 5.14
Lintian User's Manual, section 2.4
Cendio ThinLinc bug #5232