Iceweasel to Firefox ESR update

Just in case you're wondering, after update/upgrade your Debian Jessie (stable) machine, you can "apt-get install iceweasel" and it will update to Firefox ESR.

Just FYI.

Icedove still remains Icedove though. Even in Sid...

That is a fact.

Originally Posted by Mitt Green Icedove still remains Icedove though. Even in Sid...

Indeed.
Icedove is a community project while Iceweasel has always been Mozilla.
Sadly, it's still unclear whether the name (thunderbird) is still under same trademark policy or not.

I did notice an, admittedly fairly inconsequential, issue with this update, though, in that the apt-get dist-upgrade command produced the following warnings (at least, for me it did—though that could be because I received firefox while I switched from stable to testing):

update-alternatives: warning: forcing reinstallation of alternative /usr/bin/iceweasel because link group x-www-browser is broken
update-alternatives: warning: skip creation of /usr/share/man/man1/x-www-browser.1.gz because associated file /usr/share/man/man1/iceweasel.1.gz (of link group x-www-browser) doesn't exist
update-alternatives: warning: forcing reinstallation of alternative /usr/bin/iceweasel because link group gnome-www-browser is broken
update-alternatives: warning: skip creation of /usr/share/man/man1/gnome-www-browser.1.gz because associated file /usr/share/man/man1/iceweasel.1.gz (of link group gnome-www-browser) doesn't exist

As it turns out, the update didn't modify the x-www-browser and gnome-www-browser link groups, which continue to point to iceweasel:

$ update-alternatives --query x-www-browser
Name: x-www-browser
Link: /usr/bin/x-www-browser
Slaves:
 x-www-browser.1.gz /usr/share/man/man1/x-www-browser.1.gz
Status: auto
Best: /usr/bin/iceweasel
Value: /usr/bin/iceweasel

Alternative: /usr/bin/firefox-esr
Priority: 70
Slaves:
 x-www-browser.1.gz /usr/share/man/man1/firefox-esr.1.gz

Alternative: /usr/bin/iceweasel
Priority: 70
Slaves:
 x-www-browser.1.gz /usr/share/man/man1/iceweasel.1.gz
$ update-alternatives --query gnome-www-browser
Name: gnome-www-browser
Link: /usr/bin/gnome-www-browser
Slaves:
 gnome-www-browser.1.gz /usr/share/man/man1/gnome-www-browser.1.gz
Status: auto
Best: /usr/bin/iceweasel
Value: /usr/bin/iceweasel

Alternative: /usr/bin/firefox-esr
Priority: 70
Slaves:
 gnome-www-browser.1.gz /usr/share/man/man1/firefox-esr.1.gz

Alternative: /usr/bin/iceweasel
Priority: 70
Slaves:
 gnome-www-browser.1.gz /usr/share/man/man1/iceweasel.1.gz

Now, iceweasel is still installed, but it is just a transitional package:

$ dpkg-query --list 'iceweasel'
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name                              Version               Architecture          Description
+++-=================================-=====================-=====================-========================================================================
ii  iceweasel                         45.1.1esr-1           all                   Web browser based on Firefox - Transitional package

And, '/usr/bin/iceweasel' is just a link to the firefox executable:

$ ls -l /usr/bin/iceweasel
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 30 May  8 03:06 /usr/bin/iceweasel -> ../lib/firefox-esr/firefox-esr

Also, the slave links of both link groups, i.e., '/usr/share/man/man1/x-www-browser.1.gz' and '/usr/share/man/man1/gnome-www-browser.1.gz', are missing, because they would resolve to a nonexistent man page, '/usr/share/man/man1/iceweasel.1.gz'. That file no longer comes with the, now transitional, iceweasel package.

Even though this issue does not cause any real problems, you may still want to resolve it. To that end, simply clean up the references to the iceweasel package in the x-www-browser and gnome-www-browser link groups, and finally remove the package:

• Remove the 'iceweasel' alternative from the x-www-browser link group:
  

  # update-alternatives --remove x-www-browser /usr/bin/iceweasel
  update-alternatives: using /usr/bin/firefox-esr to provide /usr/bin/x-www-browser (x-www-browser) in auto mode

• Similarly, remove the 'iceweasel' alternative from the gnome-www-browser link group:
  

  # update-alternatives --remove gnome-www-browser /usr/bin/iceweasel
  update-alternatives: using /usr/bin/firefox-esr to provide /usr/bin/gnome-www-browser (gnome-www-browser) in auto mode

• Finally, remove the iceweasel package:
  

  # apt-get purge iceweasel