Why the Dependency on Either Firefox-ESR or Thunderbird

[broadsworde]

Debian 9.1, Gnome 3.22.2

I want to use generic Firefox instead of the Debian flavour, so I removed the firefox-esr package. I subsequently found that Thunderbird was installed by default, an email package that I have no use for, so I go to remove that package too:

Code: Select all

$ sudo apt remove --purge thunderbird
The following additional packages will be installed:
  firefox-esr iceweasel libjsoncpp1
Suggested packages:
  fonts-stix | otf-stix fonts-lmodern mozplugger
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  lightning* thunderbird*
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  firefox-esr iceweasel libjsoncpp1
0 upgraded, 3 newly installed, 2 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 46.6 MB of archives.
After this operation, 267 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

So why does Debian insist on reinstalling firefox-esr (along with iceweasel, which I thought was the old name for firefox-esr, and libjsoncpp1)?

Can anyone help me understand.

Thanks in anticipation.

[Thorny]

Debian 9.1, Gnome 3.22.2

So why does Debian insist on reinstalling firefox-esr

Can anyone help me understand.

It is a dependency of gnome-core.

Code: Select all

thorny@Atlas:~$ aptitude why firefox-esr
i   iceweasel Depends firefox-esr
thorny@Atlas:~$ aptitude why iceweasel
i   gnome-core Depends iceweasel (>= 30)