appstreamcli crash when attempting release upgrade to cosmic

[Brian Murray]

(appstreamcli:7417): GLib-^[[1;35mCRITICAL^[[0m **: ^[[34m10:34:15.801^[[0m: g_variant_builder_end: assertion '!GVSB(builder)->uniform_item_types || GVSB(builder)->prev_item_type != NULL || g_variant_type_is_definite (GVSB(builder)->type)' failed^M
^M
(appstreamcli:7417): GLib-^[[1;35mCRITICAL^[[0m **: ^[[34m10:34:15.802^[[0m: g_variant_new_variant: assertion 'value != NULL' failed^M
^M
(appstreamcli:7417): GLib-^[[1;31mERROR^[[0m **: ^[[34m10:34:15.802^[[0m: g_variant_new_parsed: 11-13:invalid GVariant format string^M
Trace/breakpoint trap (core dumped)^M

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.04
Package: ubuntu-release-upgrader-core 1:18.04.22
ProcVersionSignature: User Name 4.15.0-30.32-generic 4.15.18
Uname: Linux 4.15.0-30-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.9-0ubuntu7.2
Architecture: amd64
CrashDB: ubuntu
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Tue Sep 4 10:39:20 2018
InstallationDate: Installed on 2018-08-13 (21 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS "Bionic Beaver" - Release amd64 (20180426)
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: ubuntu-release-upgrader
Symptom: ubuntu-release-upgrader
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to bionic on 2018-09-04 (0 days ago)
VarLogDistupgradeAptlog:
 Log time: 2018-09-04 10:29:56.386079
 Log time: 2018-09-04 10:29:59.174856
 Log time: 2018-09-04 10:34:17.437696
modified.conffile..etc.update-manager.release-upgrades: [modified]
mtime.conffile..etc.update-manager.release-upgrades: 2018-09-04T09:43:22.733910

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

I modified /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50appstream so it'd log to a file and provide more details e.g.

# Refresh AppStream cache when APT's cache is updated (i.e. apt update)
APT::Update::Post-Invoke-Success {
    "if /usr/bin/test -w /var/cache/app-info -a -e /usr/bin/appstreamcli; then appstreamcli refresh-cache --verbose > /tmp/appstream-cli.log; fi";
};

Attached is the appstream-cli.log file.

[Matthias Klumpp (ximion)]

While the actual bug is fixed in cosmic already, it might make sense to backport it to ensure upgrades run smoothly.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.