Upgrade 8.04 LTS -> 10.04 LTS fails at circular dependency with openoffice.org extensions

[Timo Jyrinki]

Binary package hint: update-manager

Update: extended the bug report to cover various newer duplicates of other OOo extensions. the core problem is the same for all of these, openoffice.org-voikko is just the most notable since it's in main and installed by default for all Finnish installations.

Anyone with any of the following openoffice.org extensions cannot currently upgrade Ubuntu with update-manager from at least 8.04 LTS:
openoffice.org-filter-binfilter
openoffice.org-report-builder
openoffice.org-voikko
openoffice.org-writer2latex

Ubuntu 8.04 LTS -> 10.04 LTS upgrades started to be offered via Update Manager when 10.04.1 was released, so more duplicates are now coming in.
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I upgraded successfully a virtual machine from 9.10 to 10.04 with update-manager, but 8.04 LTS to 10.04 LTS (update-manager -d) is erroring out, although without breaking the system. The following error is gotten after retrieving new packages and moving to Installing packages phase:

Virhe suoritettaessa ("Error running")
'E:Couldn't configure pre-depend openoffice.org-common for openoffice.org-voikko, probably a dependency cycle'
Palautetaan alkuperäistä järjestelmän tilaa ("Restoring original system state")

openoffice.org-voikko indeed pre-depends on openoffice.org-common since Ubuntu 9.04 where it was added at a last minute to prevent upgrade problems. The hardy version openoffice.org-voikko on the other hand conflicts with openoffice.org-core >=1:2.4.1.1, which is possibly where the calculation attempts stop.

WORKAROUND:
The correct order would be to remove the old openoffice.org-voikko while old OOo is still installed, so that unregistering is done using the existing OOo,, then upgrade to new OOo and, and install the new openoffice.org-voikko with the new unopkg offered by openoffice.org-common.

(note there is another report bug #556321 on 9.10 -> 10.04 upgrade problems, but I can't replicate those as described there)

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

You mentioned you thought 516727 migbt be the same bug. That bug is now fixed, can you please test this upgrade again once the new OOo hits the archive?

[Timo Jyrinki (timo-jyrinki)]

I checked it now (mirror already updated as well with the new OOo) and unfortunately no. I misunderstood that the fix was fixing OOo so that the pre-depending extensions would work, but instead openoffice.org-evolution & co. are part of the OOo source package itself, and the Pre-Depends were removed as well.

The reason for Pre-Depends originally (if I recall it right) was that the extension ABI might change and changes between OOo version, so trying to eg. unregister hardy extension with lucid's unopkg could fail. I don't know if this consideration was taken into account in the OOo fix, but it's certainly version-specific and can be tested.

I'm not sure about the options, but here goes:
1) Remove Pre-Depends from openoffice.org-voikko and it will just work now with the OOo changes?
2) If for extensions to work via this new way they need to be part of the same source package, integrate openoffice.org-voikko to OOo sources and remove Pre-Depends?
3) If these new changes now helped the situation to some extent, do some update-manager workaround to fix the case of openoffice.org-voikko?

[Timo Jyrinki (timo-jyrinki)]

1) can be ignored, won't work.

If 2) isn't counted, as I'd guess most certainly won't be done for lucid, it's either 3) ie. some hack in update-manager or:

4) Do similar changes that were done at http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~openoffice-pkgs/openoffice/3.2.0-lucid/revision/1293 in openoffice.org-voikko. The Debian maintainer of OOo itself had this to say, when I asked opinions on whether the way can be implemented for extensions in separate packages:
"the idea is there, yes. but it's not as easy implementable as what we did in -9 for stuff registered using regcomp"
"regcomp won't fail if you register stuff already registered (or unregister stuff not there). unopkg will."

[Timo Jyrinki (timo-jyrinki)]

First of all some news for the future: OpenOffice.org 3.3 will finally introduce a system where no registration for plugins are needed, just adding or removing symlinks. Yay for that.

Regarding the option 4): on the upstream voikko mailing list it was proposed that for Debian squeeze one might try and assume that no unopkg compatibility breaking changes would be forthcoming, in which case openoffice.org-voikko's Pre-Depends could be removed and commands in pre* scripts could be moved to post* scripts, resolving the situation (if there are no caveats). However, it has not yet been tested - I prepared such ooo-voikko for testing, but dist-upgrade 5.0 -> 6.0 fails in Debian currently for other reasons.

I think one can conclude that for lucid any big, untested change in openoffice.org-voikko packaging will be a big, untested change. Therefore since we have the update-manager, going with a quirk for it seems most reasonable. On a thought level, it's completely simple:
a) at the beginning of an upgrade from hardy or karmic to lucid, check and remove openoffice.org-voikko
b) at the end of an upgrade, if openoffice.org-voikko was installed before the upgrade, install the new version back.

Since OOo 3.3 will finally solve this probably once and for all, the update-manager quirk should be reasonable. However, while preparing the attached patch, I bumped into some obstacles, partially because not understanding how update-manager works:

problem 1: I don't know how to test update-manager hardy -> lucid with custom update-manager

problem 2: Removing ooo-voikko before installation:
* Since the ooo-voikko problem appears already in the dist-upgrade calculation phase, the ooo-voikko should be removed already before that which on the other hand breaks the idea of not touching anything before starting the installation
* However, if the current markRemove during lucidPostInitialUpdate is enough to fix the calculation without any negative side-effects, that's good

problem 3: Adding ooo-voikko after installation:
* Is markInstall during postUpgrade too late, should one do more like some manual apt-get install?
* Does the markInstall somehow disturb the fact that after it cleanup phase will begin which just removes stuff?

[Timo Jyrinki (timo-jyrinki)]

Marked bug #606757 as a duplicate of this bug, but note that it's about openoffice.org-writer2latex. Ie. it's the same problem, different OOo extension.

[Ken VanDine (ken-vandine)]

Closed, lucid is no longer supported