On Sat 03 Aug 2019 at 09:05:52 (-0700), Patrick Bartek wrote: > On Sat, 03 Aug 2019 07:09:29 +0200 Sven Joachim <svenj...@gmx.de> wrote: > > On 2019-08-02 21:36 -0700, Patrick Bartek wrote: > > > > > Installed Buster (netinstall CD, LXDE desktop ONLY, system-utils) in > > > Virtualbox 6.0 on Stretch (sysvinit as init) host to test and evaluate. > > > Firefox-esr, of course, installed by default, but after installing > > > Google Chrome didn't need it anymore, so . . . When I apt purge > > > firefox-esr, it was removed and epiphany-browser was installed its > > > place. ??? Strange. Never had that happen before. When I purged or > > > removed epiphany-browser, firefox-esr was reinstalled in ITS place. > > > > > > If I PINned both not to install, a lot of other files were installed > > > instead like verious ruby files, zip, vlc, etc. etc. List is way too > > > long to post here. > > > > > > Never, ever had this happen and I purged firefox-esr this way from both > > > Wheezy and Stretch. It purged as it should have been with nothing > > > added. > > > > > > Anyone got any ideas why this happened? Or is this a nasty, ol' bug? > > > > That's almost surely because of libreoffice, whose -help packages depend > > on particular browsers: > > > > ,---- > > | % LANG=C aptitude show libreoffice-help-en-us | grep Depends > > | Depends: libreoffice-common (= 1:6.3.0~rc2-1), libreoffice-l10n-en-us, > > libreoffice-help-common (= 1:6.3.0~rc2-1), firefox-esr | epiphany-browser | > > konqueror | chromium | firefox > > `---- > > > > So if you remove firefox-esr it will be replaced by by epiphany-browser, > > and vice versa. If you uninstall both, apt will choose konqueror as the > > next alternative which brings in all the other stuff. > > > > Here is the relevant changelog entry from libreoffice: > > > > ,---- > > | libreoffice (1:6.1.0~rc2-1) experimental; urgency=low > > | [...] > > | * debian/rules: > > | - don't depend on x-www-browser, only "qutebrowser" provides it. > > | Use firefox-esr | epiphany-browser | konqueror | chromium which is > > | the order xdg-open (which is used to actually open the help) does, > > too > > | (closes: #904022) > > | > > | -- Rene Engelhard <r...@debian.org> Thu, 19 Jul 2018 22:17:15 +0000 > > `---- > > That was it! Purged "help" component which is optional by the > way, to test if it was, and was able to purge epiphany-browser without > any gotchas. Strange that Google Chrome isn't an "approved" browser. > If you're going to have such a dependency, it should be general (that's > the way I always tried to code) like System Default Browser or Any > Browser. > > LibreOffice Help in 5.2 that I use in Stretch doesn't have the browser > dependency. but since I never installed Help, I don't know what is used > to display it. > > In any case, I normally have firefox quantum installed along with > Chrome. So, out of curiosity, I'm going to test if that will satisfy > the dependency, too.
Are either of chrome and quantum even Debian packages? How can anything depend on them. OTOH it might be possible to make a dummy package with /etc/alternatives to satisfy the dependency and still use your favourite browser in their stead. Cheers, David.
