Accepted debhelper 4.9.5ubuntu2 (source)

Scott James Remnant wrote:
> 
> They're not that evil ... contrary to popular belief, dpkg-deb is only
> used to build packages and for the user to tear them apart -- dpkg
> doesn't use it itself to unpack them.

This was proven to be obviously untrue, when I diverted dpkg-deb in a
preinst, and watched the unpack phase fall over hard because dpkg-deb
didn't exist anymore.  An evil hack ensued to work around this, and life
carried on as usual.

... Adam