I'm trying to build a package which has some files under /etc that are not configuration. They are included in the conffiles automatically even if I create an empty package.conffiles in the debian directory.
How can I stop dh_installdeb from doing that?
Originally, this answer suggested providing your own debian/conffiles files only listing actual configuration files to be installed. Apparently that only serves to add more configuration files but won't override the whole conffiles file.
However, I can't quite see why you'd even want that. If the files are not configuration files, the user won't edit them, so none of the automatic conffile handling will get in your way on upgrades. Also, if they're not actually config files, I'd highly recommend to simply install them to a place other than /etc, avoiding your issue as well.