removing wslview from Ubuntu-only computers?

[Keith]

On 4/3/23 3:44 AM, Oliver Grawert wrote:
> hi,
> Am Samstag, dem 01.04.2023 um 17:52 -0400 schrieb Little Girl:
>>
>>> so make sure to always have the deb installed alongside, it
>>> provides
>>> some extra apt relaed bits on top of the snap (mime stuff, the
>>> various "Provides" that other packages expect, the correct bits for
>>> /etc/alternatives and more) ...
>>
>> Wait. What? Are you saying that two copies of Firefox should be
>> installed on the same machine to satisfy some needs that aren't met
>> by the enforced default Snap installation of Firefox?
> 
> there is nothing in the firefox deb apart from some meta data and the
> maintainer scripts to i.e. set up alternatives ...
> 
> there are apt specific things that snap can not provide to apt directly
> (some dependencies on the apt side, setting alternatives, some mime
> pieces and last but not least the upgrade managemnt for older installs
> that only had the deb installed (without the empty firefox deb these
> users would have lost their browser during releas upgrades))
> 
> this is why you should make sure to keep the firefox deb installed
> alongside with the snap ...
> 
> ciao

The package description for firefox should probably be altered then.

	Description: Transitional package - firefox -> firefox snap
	 This is a transitional dummy package. It can safely be removed.
  .
	 firefox is now replaced by the firefox snap.


I think the more salient solution would be remove "Provides: 
www-browser" from wslu and add the package as a Recommends: or Suggests: 
dependency to the package wsl. The "browser" in wslu is nothing more 
than a shell script which launches a browser in WSL. It doesn't seem to 
have any use outside of Ubuntu in WSL.

Of course, if you prevent apt from choosing wslu as the best package to 
satisfy a www-browser dependency, you're likely to get another package 
selected that'll also leave users unhappy. I don't know about the 
algorithm apt uses to determine which package is used to satisfy a 
virtual package dependency, but surely xemacs21-mule-canna-wnn 
(Provides: emacsen, info-browser, mail-reader, news-reader, www-browser, 
xemacs21) would not be a improvement over wslu as a possible solution.

$ apt-cache stats
...
Normal packages: 75689
   Pure virtual packages: 2654
   Single virtual packages: 23039
   Mixed virtual packages: 2692
   Missing: 11671

The package database could probably use some tightening up to reduce 
virtual package proliferation.

-- 
Keith