Removing firefox-esr also removes gnome

[David Parker]

Hello,

I'm running Debian 9.5 (amd64) and attempting to uninstall firefox-esr.
However, apt says that gnome and gnome-core are among the packages which
will also be uninstalled. Does anyone know why Gnome apparently depends on
firefox-esr, and how I can just uninstall firefox-esr and leave Gnome alone?

Thanks!

# apt-get remove firefox-esr
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer
required:
empathy empathy-common fonts-stix hyphen-en-us libdiscid0 libjsoncpp1
libreoffice libreoffice-help-en-us libreoffice-report-builder-bin
libtelepathy-farstream3 mythes-en-us sound-juicer telepathy-gabble
telepathy-salut
Use 'apt autoremove' to remove them.
The following packages will be REMOVED:
firefox-esr gnome gnome-core iceweasel libarchive12 libepc-1.0-3
libepc-ui-1.0-3 libgnutls-deb0-28 libgnutls28 libhogweed2 libhogweed2:i386
libnettle4 libnettle4:i386 task-gnome-desktop
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 14 to remove and 82 not upgraded.
After this operation, 121 MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] n
Abort.

[Reco]

Hi.

Post by David Parker
Hello,
I'm running Debian 9.5 (amd64) and attempting to uninstall firefox-esr.
However, apt says that gnome and gnome-core are among the packages which
will also be uninstalled. Does anyone know why Gnome apparently depends on
firefox-esr, and how I can just uninstall firefox-esr and leave Gnome alone?

Both packages are metapackages that do not provide any contents but only
dependencies to other packages.

$ apt-cache show gnome | grep Section
Section: metapackages
$ apt-cache show gnome-core | grep Section
Section: metapackages

Seeing this Depends in gnome-core:

Depends: ...firefox-esr (>= 30) | firefox (>= 30) | chromium...

I suggest you to install chromium first if you value gnome-core for some
reason.

Reco

[Greg Wooledge]

Post by David Parker
Does anyone know why Gnome apparently depends on
firefox-esr, and how I can just uninstall firefox-esr and leave Gnome alone?

apt-cache show gnome-core | grep Depends

It says "... firefox-esr (>= 30) | firefox (>= 30) | chromium ..."
so you would need to replace firefox-esr with one of those two
alternatives instead of just flat-out trying to remove it.

[David Parker]

Thanks for the information. I guess I'm just surprised that the
dependencies are limited to firefox/firefox-esr/chromium. Seems like other
browsers like Iceweasel are just arbitrarily left out.

- Dave

Post by David Parker

Post by David Parker
Does anyone know why Gnome apparently depends on
firefox-esr, and how I can just uninstall firefox-esr and leave Gnome

alone?
apt-cache show gnome-core | grep Depends
It says "... firefox-esr (>= 30) | firefox (>= 30) | chromium ..."
so you would need to replace firefox-esr with one of those two
alternatives instead of just flat-out trying to remove it.

[Reco]

Hi.

Post by David Parker
Thanks for the information. I guess I'm just surprised that the
dependencies are limited to firefox/firefox-esr/chromium.

Other browsers don't have whatever it takes to make chrome-gnome-shell
working. Or are proprietary.

Post by David Parker
Seems like other browsers like Iceweasel are just arbitrarily left
out.

It's been two years since they discontinued Iceweasel.

Reco

[Ben Caradoc-Davies]

Post by Reco

Post by David Parker
Seems like other browsers like Iceweasel are just arbitrarily left
out.

It's been two years since they discontinued Iceweasel.

Iceweasel was just Debian's Firefox rebranded to address trademark and
logo licensing issues
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_software_rebranded_by_Debian#Iceweasel>.
In June 2016, the iceweasel package was replaced with the firefox-esr
package.

Kind regards,

[John Crawley]

Thanks for the information.  I guess I'm just surprised that the
dependencies are limited to firefox/firefox-esr/chromium.  Seems like
other browsers like Iceweasel are just arbitrarily left out.

https://www.debian.org/releases/stretch/amd64/release-notes/ch-information.en.html#browser-security

[Jonathan Dowland]

Post by David Parker
Thanks for the information. I guess I'm just surprised that the
dependencies are limited to firefox/firefox-esr/chromium. Seems like other
browsers like Iceweasel are just arbitrarily left out.

This is partially because we don't have a virtual package for
"x-www-browser" (I think we should, but haven't done the work to
convince anyone of this yet), although there is a "gnome-www-browser".

[Reco]

Hi.

Post by Jonathan Dowland

Post by David Parker
Thanks for the information. I guess I'm just surprised that the
dependencies are limited to firefox/firefox-esr/chromium. Seems like other
browsers like Iceweasel are just arbitrarily left out.

This is partially because we don't have a virtual package for
"x-www-browser" (I think we should, but haven't done the work to
convince anyone of this yet), although there is a "gnome-www-browser".

So it kind of makes sense for gnome-core to depend on gnome-www-browser,
isn't it? Or there's a reason why using gnome-www-browser is unsuitable
for GNOME DE?

Reco

[Jonathan Dowland]

Post by Reco
So it kind of makes sense for gnome-core to depend on gnome-www-browser,
isn't it? Or there's a reason why using gnome-www-browser is unsuitable
for GNOME DE?

Yeah that makes perfect sense in that case. I think we need an
x-www-browser for some other situations, when any other package ships a
.desktop shortcut that launches /usr/bin/x-www-browser for instance
(such as LXDE does, but depends on www-browser, which can be satisfied
by w3m which does not register an alternative for x-www-browser, thus
the link in LXDE does not work)

[John Crawley]

Post by Jonathan Dowland

Post by Reco
So it kind of makes sense for gnome-core to depend on gnome-www-browser,
isn't it? Or there's a reason why using gnome-www-browser is unsuitable
for GNOME DE?

Yeah that makes perfect sense in that case. I think we need an
x-www-browser for some other situations, when any other package ships a
.desktop shortcut that launches /usr/bin/x-www-browser for instance
(such as LXDE does, but depends on www-browser, which can be satisfied
by w3m which does not register an alternative for x-www-browser, thus
the link in LXDE does not work)

www-browser and x-www-browser being different things, this would be a
bug in the LXDE metapackage?

[Jonathan Dowland]

Post by John Crawley
www-browser and x-www-browser being different things, this would be a
bug in the LXDE metapackage?

It is indeed, yes,* but what's the fix: what should the metapackage
actually depend upon, given x-www-browser virtual package does not exist
yet?


* or arguably whichever concrete lxde package actually contains the
shortcut definition

[Reco]

Hi.

Post by Jonathan Dowland

www-browser and x-www-browser being different things, this would be a bug in the LXDE metapackage?

It is indeed, yes,* but what's the fix: what should the metapackage
actually depend upon, given x-www-browser virtual package does not exist
yet?
* or arguably whichever concrete lxde package actually contains the
shortcut definition

lxde-core depends on www-browser already (Suggests, actually, but that's
irrelevant). So it might as well depend on this to-be-done
x-www-browser.

Reco

[John Crawley]

Post by Reco

Post by Jonathan Dowland

www-browser and x-www-browser being different things, this would be a bug in the LXDE metapackage?

It is indeed, yes,* but what's the fix: what should the metapackage
actually depend upon, given x-www-browser virtual package does not exist
yet?
* or arguably whichever concrete lxde package actually contains the
shortcut definition

lxde-core depends on www-browser already (Suggests, actually, but that's
irrelevant). So it might as well depend on this to-be-done
x-www-browser.

Can a package depend on a non-existant virtual package?
Is x-www-browser due to be added to the official Debian virtual package
list?
(
https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/virtual-package-names-list.txt
Items in that list which are also Debian alternatives should be marked
with a * but some have been missed. )

At the moment www-browser is a virtual package, but not a registered
Debian alternative, while x-www-browser is an alternative but not a VP. :|

I suppose a workaround for the LXDE package would be to depend
on/recommend/suggest any of a list of usable X browsers, like:
Suggests: firefox | firefox-esr | chromium ...
The choice of safe possibilities for that list might be quite limited.

BTW if a package ships a .desktop file evoking x-www-browser, is it not
obliged to Depend on (rather than Recommend/Suggest) a package which
provides that alternative? Or would a TryExec field in the .desktop file
be enough to cover it?

[Jonathan Dowland]

Post by John Crawley
Can a package depend on a non-existant virtual package?

It can, but this is likely a bug if it happens.

Post by John Crawley
Is x-www-browser due to be added to the official Debian virtual
package list?

I'm advocating for x-www-browser to exist, but haven't done the work
to make it so. Note that the authorative list of virtual package names
in policy is out of date. (I have some other ideas about fixing that
which I want to pick up too)

Post by John Crawley
At the moment www-browser is a virtual package, but not a registered
Debian alternative, while x-www-browser is an alternative but not a VP. :|

www-browser is an alternative, provided by (at least) lynx.

Post by John Crawley
I suppose a workaround for the LXDE package would be to depend
Suggests: firefox | firefox-esr | chromium ...
The choice of safe possibilities for that list might be quite limited.

Yes, but that is effectively doing the work of defining a virtual
package but in the LXDE dependencies. We might as well do it properly and
in the right place from the start.

Post by John Crawley
BTW if a package ships a .desktop file evoking x-www-browser, is it
not obliged to Depend on (rather than Recommend/Suggest) a package
which provides that alternative? Or would a TryExec field in the
.desktop file be enough to cover it?

Personally I agree that this should be a Depends:. I'm not sure the LXDE
maintainers agree. I think Recommends: would be acceptable *if* LXDE's
behaviour was to not show the button/shortcut if the path it was
pointing at was non-existent (perhaps this is achieved via TryExec=).
But that's not the current behaviour.

[Jonathan Dowland]

Post by Reco
lxde-core depends on www-browser already (Suggests, actually, but that's
irrelevant). So it might as well depend on this to-be-done
x-www-browser.

Yes. That's exactly what I am advocating in the bug I reported about
this (=833268, in 2016). I haven't yet re-assigned the bug to the
correct real package though.

[John Crawley]

Post by Jonathan Dowland

Post by Reco
lxde-core depends on www-browser already (Suggests, actually, but that's
irrelevant). So it might as well depend on this to-be-done
x-www-browser.

Yes. That's exactly what I am advocating in the bug I reported about
this (=833268, in 2016). I haven't yet re-assigned the bug to the
correct real package though.

Thank you for looking at this, anyway!

[Liam O'Toole]

Post by Greg Wooledge

Post by David Parker
Does anyone know why Gnome apparently depends on
firefox-esr, and how I can just uninstall firefox-esr and leave Gnome alone?

apt-cache show gnome-core | grep Depends
It says "... firefox-esr (>= 30) | firefox (>= 30) | chromium ..."
so you would need to replace firefox-esr with one of those two
alternatives instead of just flat-out trying to remove it.

A slightly more economical evocation:

apt depends gnome-core

[t***@tuxteam.de]

Post by David Parker
Hello,
I'm running Debian 9.5 (amd64) and attempting to uninstall firefox-esr.
However, apt says that gnome and gnome-core are among the packages which
will also be uninstalled. Does anyone know why Gnome apparently depends on
firefox-esr, and how I can just uninstall firefox-esr and leave Gnome alone?
Thanks!

If you know what you are doing, you can also use equivs [1] [2] to
let the package manager believe that some dependency is satisfied.

As always, lying comes at a cost, the minimum being to remember what
lies you've told so-far :-)

Cheers

[1] https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-reference/ch02.en.html#_the_equivs_package
[2] https://packages.debian.org/stretch/equivs

-- tomás

[Cindy-Sue Causey]

Post by David Parker
Hello,
I'm running Debian 9.5 (amd64) and attempting to uninstall firefox-esr.
However, apt says that gnome and gnome-core are among the packages which
will also be uninstalled. Does anyone know why Gnome apparently depends on
firefox-esr, and how I can just uninstall firefox-esr and leave Gnome alone?
Thanks!
# apt-get remove firefox-esr
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer
empathy empathy-common fonts-stix hyphen-en-us libdiscid0 libjsoncpp1
libreoffice libreoffice-help-en-us libreoffice-report-builder-bin
libtelepathy-farstream3 mythes-en-us sound-juicer telepathy-gabble
telepathy-salut
Use 'apt autoremove' to remove them.

I saw the other interesting information that was directly about your
question. This part about "are no longer required" caught my eye
because it references LibreOffice. Is that on purpose on your part,
meaning had you decided that was no longer needed?

In advance, I understand that it could be some "metapackage" thing or
something, but I just did a quick check on my setup. This second I'm
in a couple year old Buster (out of necessity/desperation). It's just
been upgraded except for packages still on hold by Developers.

LibreOffice stood its ground in mine throughout while I just upgraded
800 packages @ 295MB (with those other 434 [outdated] plus 456 new
totaling 883 MB still on hold).

As long as I'm here with that curiosity about LibreOffice no longer
being needed, LibreOffice's "apt-cache show LibreOffice" output had a
nice quip that helped me further understand apt/apt-get's thought
process even more:

"[LibreOffice's metapackage] also recommends additional packages (e.g.
fonts) in order to match an upstream LibreOffice install as closely as
possible."

Ohhhhh, ok, so recommended files are at least in part about us users
replicating Developers' setups more completely? That's how my brain's
interpreting that right there. I can see the rationale when it comes
to doing things like actively filing bug reports. If that specific has
come up previously on Debian-User, it just *pffft* right overhead that
time. :)

Post by David Parker
firefox-esr gnome gnome-core iceweasel libarchive12 libepc-1.0-3
libepc-ui-1.0-3 libgnutls-deb0-28 libgnutls28 libhogweed2 libhogweed2:i386
libnettle4 libnettle4:i386 task-gnome-desktop
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 14 to remove and 82 not upgraded.
After this operation, 121 MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] n
Abort.

Cindy :)