Just in case somebody is interested in installing Mediawiki the Debian way, here is the answer of Daniel Burrows (Debian Developer).
Summary: dependencies fixed in post-Etch releases + installing links (text web browser) avoid the auto-installation of Firefox.
cheers Simon
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: dependencies woes with Debian MediaWiki package Resent-Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2008 16:54:01 +0000 (UTC) Resent-From: debian-user@lists.debian.org Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2008 07:53:43 -0700 From: Daniel Burrows dburrows@debian.org To: debian-user@lists.debian.org References: 47E400AC.30708@gmail.com
On Fri, Mar 21, 2008 at 07:38:36PM +0100, Simon Jolle sjolle urandomdev@gmail.com was heard to say:
I have here VDS with minimal Debian installation. Why Debian wish to install me Firefox, Gnome/GTK+ components, X11 components, Latex, Sound server, portmap, quite enough libraries etc.
I apologize for taking so long to get back to you.
I asked whether you were running etch because the unstable/testing version of mediawiki doesn't have dependencies that would pull in the stuff you're talking about. I've taken a brief look at the stable version, and I think I see what's happening. You can probably install links or add --without-recommends to the command-line to get a saner install.
* Mozilla: iceape-browser gets installed because tetex-doc recommends it. tetex-doc is recommended by tetex-base, which is pulled in by tetex-bin.
This is the cause of most of your problems; if you install a text-mode browser like links, it will fulfill this dependency and iceape won't get installed.
* Gnome/GTK+: pulled in by Mozilla, as far as I can tell.
* X11: some of these are really necessary. mediawiki-math needs latex and Ghostscript components, and these depend on X11 libraries because they manipulate X11 fonts and/or can connect to an X server.
* Latex: for mediawiki-math.
* Sound server: I think this is pulled in by Gnome/GTK+.
* portmap: Pulled in by fam (part of Gnome)
Daniel