Any chance this dependency could be moved over to php-fpm or changed into a Recommends? The latter actually seems more sensible since most apps don't use sessions in the first place or may change session.save_handler. This would also be in line with other packages that still ship cronjobs that aren't necessarily required; some don't mention cron in their control at all (man-db, check-dfsg-status, rkhunter) or just recommend it (chkrootkit).
Unfortunately this means all installations of PHP now pull in cron,
systemd(-standalone-sysusers) and by default even exim4, including
CLI-only installations. This isn't great for minimal containers and
development environments. The least intrusive solution is to `apt
install anacron php-common --no-install-recommends; [ -x
/usr/bin/systemctl ] && systemctl disable --now anacron` to resolve the
dependency peacefully.
