[Novalug] How to gut &^*%$& Firefox??

[Bryan J. Smith]

There are ways to create a "helper package" that triggers on updates
and re-removes the files.  Of course, this gets pretty circular and is not
recommended for a reason.

Furthermore, you're not being exposed to why packages are in increasingly
granular.  What is one package becomes two, then ten, etc... as a result of
such requirements to separate out portions.

And standards vary.

-- Bryan

P.S.  Just because the majority of Windows applications don't natively
support packaging doesn't mean it's not how companies deploy.  Windows
basic application publication and MSI formats, Microsoft's SMS, Novell's Zen,
BladeLogic, Opsware, etc... spring to mind.  Ironically they just do what
all "packages" distros have natively.  Of course that doesn't solve the
problem with any vendor that does not support the application if it's been
"repackaged" (regardless of OS), my biggest complaint about Oracle,
HP's PSP, etc... (I literally just had this discussion at my desk 10 minutes ago).


----- Original Message ----
From: American Dave <novalug at soupy.org>

On Thu, Oct 08, 2009 at 11:18:08AM -0500, Beartooth wrote:
> > p.s. rm-ing the locale files is nice, but then rpm -V 
> > complains.
> 
>      I got a couple versions of commands from the 
> fedora-general list on gmane :
> 
> rm -fr /usr/lib/firefox-*/extensions/langpack-*
> 
> rm -fr /usr/lib64/firefox-*/extensions/langpack-*

Per Jim's comment, removing the files with rm "works" but it interferes
with the package manager.  rpm's "verify" fails, and any update will
simply put the languages back.

Package managers in distros like Fedora, RHEL, Ubuntu, and Debian are
very much in charge of what's on a host.  This is very different from
Win32 where you have installers per application and can add/remove at
will.  Big philosophy difference, and hence #debian used to drill users
with "don't fuck with the package manager".

In a nutshell, for the distros we're talking about, you can
either find packages to remove (note on my Fedora those files appear owned by the Firefox package, and not removable sub-packages), or you can go outside the package manager's control and install your own Firefox in /usr/local, or find a different Firefox to install.




 -- 
Bryan J  Smith           Professional, Technical Annoyance 
Linked Profile:         http://www.linkedin.com/in/bjsmith 
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