I think dpkg should systematically save the default content of each and every file that might reasonably be expected to be modified by the user.
AFAICT, currently, dpkg only saves the md5 of it, so as to detect whether the file was locally modified.  But if the actual file was available, then dpkg could offer a bit more functionality:
- diff3 when a new version of a locally-modified config file needs to be installed.
  This would be a good addition, alongside the "view diff" option already provided.
- let the user view the local-changes applied to a given package's config files.
- better yet: let the user view (and save) a "complete description" of a system's config simply by listing all installed packages (and their version), plus a diff of all the modified config files.  plus the content of all the files in /etc not owned by any package.

forcemerge 32877 548663
thanks

This request is not new... please try to check open bug reports on the
topic before filing new ones.

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=32877 has lots of
duplicates already.

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