File Roller help is missing in Lubuntu: "Could not display help, the specified location is not supported"

[Dave Kokandy]

In a Lubuntu Vivid daily Live Session test (20150109), I tried to access the Help section in file-roller and got the following error message:

Could not display help
The specified location is not supported

Steps to reproduce
1.Boot Lubuntu Vivid live session on USB
2.Open Accessories > "Archive Manager"
3.In main menu, select "Help" > "Contents" (OR press F1)

Expected results: to access the help section for file-roller.

Actual results: A dialog appears and shows "Could not display help"

Workaround:
Install yelp.

Versions affected: Vivid (Live Session), Vivid (installed)

lsb_release -rd:
Description: Ubuntu Vivid Vervet (development branch)
Release: 15.04

(Actually Lubuntu)

apt-cache policy file-roller:
file-roller:
  Installed: 3.14.2-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 3.14.2-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 3.14.2-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ vivid/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

Hardware profile: https://gist.github.com/e4e4d9d3e41ccf5c27c7

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 15.04
Package: file-roller 3.14.2-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.18.0-8.9-generic 3.18.1
Uname: Linux 3.18.0-8-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.15.1-0ubuntu2
Architecture: amd64
CasperVersion: 1.347
CurrentDesktop: LXDE
Date: Sat Jan 10 01:45:39 2015
LiveMediaBuild: Lubuntu 15.04 "Vivid Vervet" - Alpha amd64 (20150109)
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: file-roller
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Ubuntu QA Website (ubuntuqa)]

This bug has been reported on the Ubuntu ISO testing tracker.

A list of all reports related to this bug can be found here:
http://iso.qa.ubuntu.com/qatracker/reports/bugs/1409185

[Lyn Perrine (walterorlin)]

This help button does not work. This is because it is intended to launch yelp the gnome help tool which is not in lubuntu-desktop. Installing yelp is a workaround that will get help working. Yelp may have been left out for iso size concerns but this workaround should be documented somewhere.

[Dave Kokandy (drkokandy)]

Installing Yelp workaround tested & works.

Installing Yelp included the following packages:

gnome-user-guide libyelp0 yelp yelp-xsl

apt reported this used 46.0 MB of additional disk space.

[Dave Kokandy (drkokandy)]

Actually, this is not just on a live session. This issue also remains on Lubuntu after it's been fully installed on a new computer.

Same workaround - installing yelp - solves this issue.

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

Language Support (the language-selector-gnome package) is another tool whose help does not open due to the absence of yelp. Same thing: yelp is recommended, not a dependency.

[Tim Lunn (darkxst)]

gnome-user-guide would make up the bulk of that 46MB, and that probably wouldnt even be useful on lubuntu.

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

How about these changes:

- Move gnome-user-guide from recommends to suggests in yelp

- Add gnome-user-guide to recommends in ubuntu-gnome-meta

- Move yelp from recommends to depends in file-roller and language-selector-gnome

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Chris Guiver (guiverc)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. We are sorry that we do not always have the capacity to look at all reported bugs in a timely manner. There have been many changes in Ubuntu since that time you reported the bug and your problem may have been fixed with some of the updates. It would help us a lot if you could test it on a currently supported Ubuntu version. When you test it and it is still an issue, kindly upload the updated logs by running only once:
apport-collect <bug #>

and any other logs that are relevant for this particular issue.

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

Lubuntu does not install file-roller or language-selector-gnome by default any longer, so the Lubuntu aspect of this bug is obsolete.

yelp does not recommend gnome-user-guide (or gnome-user-docs) any longer, so possible disk space reasons for not letting file-roller and language-selector-gnome depend on it are gone.

But the thought, to let file-roller and language-selector-gnome (and probably several other packages which install XML help files) depend instead of recommend yelp, still makes sense IMO. I'll consult with someone before doing anything, though.

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

Second thoughts. The Debian policy says:

"The Recommends field should list packages that would be found together with this one in all but unusual installations."

Hence using Recommends for yelp in those packages is well in line with how it's supposed to work, and since Lubuntu is out of the picture, there is no real issue to fix.

Closing.