Comment 6 for bug 1483923

AIUI, it isn't appropriate for a package to modify another package's behaviour from under its feet in this way. Debian Policy Appendix G (not formally policy I don't think) says: "Do not attempt to divert a conffile, as dpkg does not handle it well.". Though https://wiki.debian.org/ConfigPackages does talk about this method.

Another cleaner approach would be to have your johnny-dep package provide its own configuration file and init script somewhere else, and then depend on a package that provides the nginx binaries but no configuration. I don't know if nginx provides such packages currently, but if changes are required there I'd recommend that they be done in Debian rather than carrying an Ubuntu delta.

Up to Thomas though.