Package: firefox-esr Version: 115.9.0esr-2 Severity: wishlist X-Debbugs-Cc: wes...@schwengle.net
Dear Maintainer, I went digging for how firefox works on Debian because I want to make a partial switch from Google Chrome to firefox. There are some things that could be improved I think. Mainly by starting to make use of update-alternatives. I want to start of with by saying this bug is more or less a combination of bugs #1001724 and #1033594. They both address why I have this wish, for different reasons. /usr/bin/firefox is a wrapper script to which looks for $FIREFOX.real, where $FIREFOX is assuming, firefox. It looks for command firefox, which may be something else if the user has a wrapper script itself in their PATH and this than misses its target, #1001724 in short. The easy way to solve this is IMO a update-alternatives group for firefox like Google Chrome does (via the Google repo). They have an update-alternatives group, aptly named `google-chrome', which provides `/usr/bin/google-chrome' and as a user you can change this to have google-chrome-{unstable,beta,stable} as your google-chrome. Instead of the wrapper script, firefox-esr should provide firefox-esr. The firefox package should provide firefox-stable (or similar) and install itself at a higher level than firefox-esr. This way the firefox binary "overrides" the ESR. At least, that is my take on it, feel free to swap the priorities around. It would be nice if the upstream firefox packages, also adhere to this, eg, firefox-nightly is already installed as firefox-nightly, but doesn't add an update-alternatives. Another reason, besides the wrapper script, is that firefox doesn't really put profiles in a different path, eg, `~/.config/firefox-nightly', `~/.config/firefox', etc etc. They however in their compatibility.ini, eg in `~/.mozilla/firefox/rqowq6li.default-esr/compatibility.ini', you can see a LastPlatformDIr, which is for the nightly version: LastPlatformDir=/usr/lib/firefox-esr Now, when I run `readlink -m /usr/bin/firefox-nightly' it returns `/usr/lib/firefox-nightly/firefox'. The LastPlatformDir is the dirname of the binary. Now, with a propper update-alternative I can also do this on the binary `/usr/bin/firefox', as this will point to `/etc/alternatives/firefox', which in turn links to `/usr/bin/firefox-nightly', which is `/usr/lib/firefox-nightly/firefox'. I can do a little bit of magic with some shell scripts to startup firefox profiles for different versions. The wrapper script blocks this from working: $ readlink -m /usr/bin/firefox /usr/bin/firefox I hope to see this wish become reality :) Cheers, Wesley -- Package-specific info: -- Extensions information Name: Add-ons Search Detection Location: /usr/lib/firefox-esr/browser/omni.ja Package: firefox-esr Status: enabled Name: Bing Location: /usr/lib/firefox-esr/browser/omni.ja Package: firefox-esr Status: enabled Name: Dark theme Location: /usr/lib/firefox-esr/browser/omni.ja Package: firefox-esr Status: user-disabled Name: DuckDuckGo Location: /usr/lib/firefox-esr/browser/omni.ja Package: firefox-esr Status: enabled Name: Firefox Alpenglow theme Location: /usr/lib/firefox-esr/browser/omni.ja Package: firefox-esr Status: user-disabled Name: Firefox Screenshots Location: /usr/lib/firefox-esr/browser/features/screensh...@mozilla.org.xpi Package: firefox-esr Status: enabled Name: Form Autofill Location: /usr/lib/firefox-esr/browser/features/formautof...@mozilla.org.xpi Package: firefox-esr Status: enabled Name: Google Location: /usr/lib/firefox-esr/browser/omni.ja Package: firefox-esr Status: enabled Name: Light theme Location: /usr/lib/firefox-esr/browser/omni.ja Package: firefox-esr Status: user-disabled Name: Picture-In-Picture Location: /usr/lib/firefox-esr/browser/features/pictureinpict...@mozilla.org.xpi Package: firefox-esr Status: enabled Name: System theme — auto theme Location: /usr/lib/firefox-esr/omni.ja Package: firefox-esr Status: enabled Name: Web Compatibility Interventions Location: /usr/lib/firefox-esr/browser/features/webcom...@mozilla.org.xpi Package: firefox-esr Status: enabled Name: WebCompat Reporter Location: /usr/lib/firefox-esr/browser/features/webcompat-repor...@mozilla.org.xpi Package: firefox-esr Status: user-disabled Name: Wikipedia (en) Location: /usr/lib/firefox-esr/browser/omni.ja Package: firefox-esr Status: enabled -- Addons package information ii firefox-esr 115.9.0esr-2 amd64 Mozilla Firefox web browser - Extended Support Release (ESR) -- System Information: Debian Release: trixie/sid APT prefers unstable APT policy: (900, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (100, 'experimental'), (10, 'stable-updates'), (10, 'stable-security'), (10, 'oldstable-security'), (10, 'oldoldstable'), (10, 'stable'), (10, 'oldstable') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Foreign Architectures: i386 Kernel: Linux 6.7.7-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU threads; PREEMPT) Kernel taint flags: TAINT_WARN, TAINT_OOT_MODULE, TAINT_UNSIGNED_MODULE Locale: LANG=C.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=C.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_US:en Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system) LSM: AppArmor: enabled Versions of packages firefox-esr depends on: ii debianutils 5.17 ii fontconfig 2.15.0-1.1 ii libasound2t64 1.2.11-1+b1 ii libatk1.0-0t64 2.51.90-4 ii libc6 2.37-15.1 ii libcairo-gobject2 1.18.0-2 ii libcairo2 1.18.0-2 ii libdbus-1-3 1.14.10-4+b1 ii libdbus-glib-1-2 0.112-3+b2 ii libevent-2.1-7t64 2.1.12-stable-8.1+b1 ii libffi8 3.4.6-1 ii libfontconfig1 2.15.0-1.1 ii libfreetype6 2.13.2+dfsg-1+b2 ii libgcc-s1 14-20240315-1 ii libgdk-pixbuf-2.0-0 2.42.10+dfsg-3+b2 ii libglib2.0-0t64 2.78.4-5 ii libgtk-3-0t64 3.24.41-3 ii libnspr4 2:4.35-1.1+b1 ii libnss3 2:3.99-1 ii libpango-1.0-0 1.52.1+ds-1 ii libstdc++6 14-20240315-1 ii libvpx8 1.13.1-2 ii libx11-6 2:1.8.7-1 ii libx11-xcb1 2:1.8.7-1 ii libxcb-shm0 1.15-1 ii libxcb1 1.15-1 ii libxcomposite1 1:0.4.5-1 ii libxdamage1 1:1.1.6-1 ii libxext6 2:1.3.4-1+b1 ii libxfixes3 1:6.0.0-2 ii libxrandr2 2:1.5.4-1 ii libxtst6 2:1.2.3-1.1 ii procps 2:4.0.4-4 ii zlib1g 1:1.3.dfsg-3.1 Versions of packages firefox-esr recommends: ii libavcodec-extra60 [libavcodec60] 7:6.1.1-2 Versions of packages firefox-esr suggests: ii fonts-lmodern 2.005-1 ii fonts-stix [otf-stix] 1.1.1-5 ii libcanberra0t64 [libcanberra0] 0.30-12.2 ii libgssapi-krb5-2 1.20.1-6 pn pulseaudio <none> -- debconf-show failed