Comment 2 for bug 1652032

Network Manager does: --conf-file=/dev/null --conf-dir=/etc/NetworkManager/dnsmasq.d
and might therefore be an example of those that call it - as you mentioned it can be discussed if it would have to add the,*.conf or anything like it.

An example of a program not calling with --conf-dir=/etc/dnsmasq.d might be libvirt.
But then it explicitly wants no other config at all to influence it and in terms of the interface exceptions and such it is correct as it explicitly states the interface to bind to.
Call:
--conf-file=/var/lib/libvirt/dnsmasq/default.conf
But in there:
interface=virbr0
So instead of using exclusions it it very specific where to bind to.
Maybe that and similar cases are a reason why it should not always pull in the dnsmasq.d dir - not sure?

Could you list the other examples you found - as I assume to get an idea of potential side effects we would have to collect as much as possible.