reopen 814321 thanks Dropping this dependency led to one of my machines uninstalling tex-common, which then made dpkg error out:
# dpkg --configure -a Setting up fonts-lmodern (2.004.5-2) ... /var/lib/dpkg/info/fonts-lmodern.postinst: 17: /var/lib/dpkg/info/fonts-lmodern.postinst: update-texmf-config: not found dpkg: error processing package fonts-lmodern (--configure): subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 127 Errors were encountered while processing: fonts-lmodern So I think it either should depend on tex-common after all, or shouldn't attempt to call update-texmf-config unless tex-common happens to be there.