I ran into this problem as well. The problem seems to be in the 'postrm' script, which first removes the 'spread' user and then tries to run dpkg-statoverride. This results in:
# dpkg --purge spread
(Reading database ... 40112 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing spread ...
Purging configuration files for spread ...
dpkg-statoverrides: unrecoverable fatal error, aborting:
syntax error: unknown user 'spread' in statoverride file
dpkg-statoverrides: unrecoverable fatal error, aborting:
syntax error: unknown user 'spread' in statoverride file
The fix is to let debian/spread.postrm first call dpkg-statoverride and then call userdel.
I ran into this problem as well. The problem seems to be in the 'postrm' script, which first removes the 'spread' user and then tries to run dpkg-statoverride. This results in:
# dpkg --purge spread
(Reading database ... 40112 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing spread ...
Purging configuration files for spread ...
dpkg-statoverrides: unrecoverable fatal error, aborting:
syntax error: unknown user 'spread' in statoverride file
dpkg-statoverrides: unrecoverable fatal error, aborting:
syntax error: unknown user 'spread' in statoverride file
The fix is to let debian/ spread. postrm first call dpkg-statoverride and then call userdel.