Package: libglade2-dev Version: 1:2.6.4-2 Severity: minor According to http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-docs.html#fr115
I can do this: # cat /etc/dpkg/dpkg.cfg.d/75no-docs path-exclude=/usr/share/doc/* [...] ...and packages have to deal with it. With that config in place, libglade2-dev can't be installed: # apt-get install libglade2-dev Reading package lists... Building dependency tree... Reading state information... Suggested packages: glade glade-gnome The following NEW packages will be installed: libglade2-dev 0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Need to get 0 B/120 kB of archives. After this operation, 536 kB of additional disk space will be used. debconf: delaying package configuration, since apt-utils is not installed E: Can not write log (Is /dev/pts mounted?) - posix_openpt (2: No such file or directory) Selecting previously unselected package libglade2-dev:amd64. (Reading database ... 47531 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to unpack .../libglade2-dev_1%3a2.6.4-2_amd64.deb ... Unpacking libglade2-dev:amd64 (1:2.6.4-2) ... Processing triggers for man-db (2.7.0.2-5) ... Setting up libglade2-dev:amd64 (1:2.6.4-2) ... ln: failed to create symbolic link ‘/usr/share/doc/libglade2-dev/html’: No such file or directory dpkg: error processing package libglade2-dev:amd64 (--configure): subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1 Errors were encountered while processing: libglade2-dev:amd64 Error, do this: mount -t proc proc /proc E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) I believe this is a policy violation. Please either create the symlink at build time (using debian/<package>.links), or change the postinst to cope with an absent /usr/share/doc/.