Cannot update plasmoids ("The new package has a different type from the old version already installed")

[Matteo Italia]

Ubuntu 22.04 AMD64, KPackage 5.92 (libkf5package5_5.92.0-0ubuntu1, kflibkf5package-data_5.92.0-0ubuntu1)

Every time Plasma Discover tries to update a Plasmoid I installed ("Resources Monitor - fork", from https://store.kde.org/p/1527636) it fails, saying "The new package has a different type from the old version already installed."; I get the same message when trying to update it from the "Install new stuff" dialog in the "Add objects" mode or however it's called in English; letting it download the package automatically vs providing the zip manually doesn't change the result. The only way I have to update it is to uninstall it and re-install the updated version. The updated version does have the same type as the old one of course.

Investigating the issue, I traced the message to KPackage, and specifically to src/kpackage/private/packagejobthread.cpp, that (line 264) goes like this:

    if (QFile::exists(targetName)) {
        if (operation == Update) {
            KPluginMetaData oldMeta(targetName + QLatin1String("/metadata.desktop"));

            if (readKPackageTypes(oldMeta) != readKPackageTypes(meta)) {
                d->errorMessage = i18n("The new package has a different type from the old version already installed.");
                d->errorCode = Package::JobError::UpdatePackageTypeMismatchError;

however, at line 78 it refers to some alternative metaDataFiles that may be present, in particular metadata.json:

Q_GLOBAL_STATIC_WITH_ARGS(QStringList, metaDataFiles, (QStringList(QLatin1String("metadata.desktop")) << QLatin1String("metadata.json")))

Indeed, looking under ~/.local/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.resourcesMonitor-fork I see that there's no metadata.desktop, but only metadata.json (that, from what I gather, seems to be the preferred format nowadays).

Apparently, this code wasn't updated to look also for the JSON by mistake, as here https://github.com/KDE/kpackage/commit/57ba435edb2fae1626581a769079b4cf8751044f an extra check was added. Indeed, applying that patch, rebulding and installing the new packages (libkf5package5, libkf5package-data) fixed the issue.

My proposal here is to backport that patch (that applies cleanly) to the version shipped with Ubuntu 22.04 (5.92), otherwise I expect more and more stuff installed through knewstuff to become non-updateable with this obscure error.

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

The attachment "Patch from https://github.com/KDE/kpackage/commit/57ba435edb2fae1626581a769079b4cf8751044f" seems to be a patch. If it isn't, please remove the "patch" flag from the attachment, remove the "patch" tag, and if you are a member of the ~ubuntu-reviewers, unsubscribe the team.

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