Closed issue by q66 on void-packages repository

https://github.com/void-linux/void-packages/issues/27731

Description:
Void has previously made it policy to avoid introducing random forks of major browsers. Despite that, we still have `icecat` in the repos, which seems to me to be pretty much just `firefox-esr` with altered branding and some custom extensions and changed settings. It is so close to just `firefox-esr` that the project no longer bothers to create their own release tarballs, so the `icecat` template in Void fully relies on custom tarballs created by @pullmoll, despite it usually also being policy that we package software from official release archives except in special cases.

So the question is, are those changes it brings worthwhile enough to warrant an entire new firefox build (this one even more annoyingly long than the ordinary one, since it has to generate the localization packages from scratch, which takes a significant chunk of the overall time)? And if those changes are in fact worthwhile, why can't they be done externally to our standard firefox build, in form of config tweaks and custom installable extensions?

This whole thing seems rather puzzling to me. One thing I heard raised as an advantage is that icecat has its own home directory path, so it doesn't conflict with mainline non-esr firefox, but that sounds more like an excuse than anything else to me.

@void-linux/pkg-committers