Thanks for the investigation. The role of the user environment explains why I couldn't reproduce this. Strange that this is just being noticed now; the buggy behavior has been around for several versions and is present in wheezy.
- Bug#738951: sa-compile: post-installation script fails: On... Vincent Lefevre
- Bug#738951: sa-compile: post-installation script fail... Vincent Lefevre
- Bug#738951: sa-compile: post-installation script ... Noah Meyerhans
- Bug#738951: sa-compile: post-installation scr... Vincent Lefevre

