On Sun 17 Aug 2025 at 14:05:03 (-0700), David Christensen wrote: > On 8/17/25 06:28, Greg Wooledge wrote: > > On Sat, Aug 16, 2025 at 23:00:29 -0700, David Christensen wrote: > > > # apt-get purge firefox-esr > > > > Since the goal is to reinstall firefox-esr shortly afterward, we don't > > really want to remove anything that depends on firefox-esr, such as > > a desktop environment metapackage. Even worse, a metapackage that > > has a line like "Depends: firefox-esr | other-browser" might bring in > > some other browser we don't want. So, this command might be better: > > > > dpkg --purge --force-depends firefox-esr > > If `apt-get purge firefox-esr` purges up the desktop or other packages > would should be precursors, that would be a serious bug.
If I understand your terminology, then I don't understand where the serious bug is. My firefox-esr is a dependency of firefox-esr-l10n-en-gb, and when setting up the system, installing firefox-esr-l10n-en-gb pulled in firefox-esr. But libreoffice-help-en-gb also depends on a browser, and I made sure to install it after firefox-esr-l10n-en-gb so that it didn't pull in some other browser.¹ So if I remove firefox-esr, APT will dutifully install epiphany-browser² and any of its dependencies that are lacking. Not what we want. > But, the fact that you mention it is disturbing. Please feel free to > test and post the results. > > If `apt-get purge firefox-esr` purges dependencies, then the sysadmin > would need to reinstall them after reinstalling firefox-esr. It would be odd for APT to remove dependencies, but they could become susceptible to autoremoval during this process. However, it's unlikely for a sysadmin to issue such a command at this time. ¹ actually unnecessary, because firefox-esr happens to be the first browser listed in the dependency alternatives. ² epiphany-browser is next in the list. Cheers, David.
