Comment 19 for bug 1709699

I think this is really a bug in packagekit. On 18.04 I can also trigger this by just running pkcon get-distro-upgrades in a terminal:

Transaction: Getting upgrades
Status: Waiting in queue
Status: Starting
Status: Finished
Results:
Fatal error: Spawn of helper '/usr/share/PackageKit/helpers/aptcc/get-distro-upgrade.py' failed: failed to spawn /usr/share/PackageKit/helpers/aptcc/get-distro-upgrade.py: Failed to execute child process ?/usr/share/PackageKit/helpers/aptcc/get-distro-upgrade.py?

The problem seems to be that in debian/rules this file is being deleted:

  58 │ # Ubuntu-specific, broken
  59 │ rm -f $(INSTALLDIR)/usr/share/PackageKit/helpers/aptcc/get-distro-upgrade.py

But it is still referenced in backends/aptcc/pk-backend-aptcc.cpp:

 287 │ /**
 288 │ * pk_backend_get_distro_upgrades:
 289 │ */
 290 │ void pk_backend_get_distro_upgrades(PkBackend *backend, PkBackendJob *job)
 291 │ {
 292 │ pk_backend_spawn_helper(spawn, job, "get-distro-upgrade.py", "get-distro-upgrades", NULL);
 293 │ }

Newer upstream versions of PackageKit (1.1.13) seem to have this file removed - and also the reference in backends/aptcc/pk-backend-aptcc.cpp.