Tools=>Bibliography launches Software Centre but fails to find "libreoffice-base" package

[Benjamin Bach]

Selecting Tools=>Bibliography in LibreOffice Writer will ask for missing software to be installed. After this, Software Centre will say that "libreoffice-base" couldn't be found.

I am not sure if the cause of this issue is in the way that Software Centre is invoked?

The package libreoffice-base exists and can be installed with "apt install libreoffice-base", after which using the Bibliography tool works fine.

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Please execute the following command only once, as it will automatically gather debugging information, in a terminal:

apport-collect 1790294

and then change the status of the bug back to "New"

When reporting bugs in the future please use apport by using 'ubuntu-bug' and the name of the package affected. You can learn more about this functionality at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReportingBugs.

[Benjamin Bach (benjaoming)]

Thanks Paul. Apport says "Package libreoffice not installed and no hook available, ignoring"

Anyways, the bug is straight-forward to reproduce on default 18.04 without libreoffice-base (which isn't installed by default). I have reproduced on two different installations.

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

I can reliably reproduce the issue on an up-to-date cosmic with the default install (libreoffice-writer 1:6.1.0-0ubuntu2 installed, libreoffice-base not installed).

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

And searching for "libreoffice-base" in gnome-software finds the package.

It appears LO requests the installation of libreoffice-base to packagekit directly, see https://github.com/LibreOffice/core/blob/master/sfx2/source/appl/appserv.cxx#L196.

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

And I can reproduce by running the following command:

    dbus-send --session --print-reply --type=method_call --dest=org.freedesktop.PackageKit \
        /org/freedesktop/PackageKit org.freedesktop.PackageKit.Modify.InstallPackageNames \
        uint32:1 array:string:"libreoffice-base" string:""

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

The D-Bus method org.freedesktop.PackageKit.Query.IsInstalled correctly reports that "libreoffice-base" is not installed, and that "libreoffice-writer" is installed. So it looks like packagekit is doing its job. This might be a problem in gnome-software.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Ismael Luceno (ismaell)]

On Ubuntu 21.04 the menu item doesn't report any errors, it simply does nothing if libreoffice-base isn't installed.

See <https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=144607>.

[Ismael Luceno (ismaell)]

Related: <https://bugs.launchpad.net/openoffice/+bug/527938>