Override dir-or-file-in-opt

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?

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

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