Bug#1058653: libreoffice-writer-nogui: fails to convert ODT to PDF "Error: source file could not be loaded"

[tony mancill]

Package: libreoffice-writer-nogui
Version: 4:7.6.4~rc1-1
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

A FTBFS bug [1] cropped up in gpredict recently that appears to be to a
change in libreoffice-writer-nogui. The build step that fails is:

$ soffice --strace --writer --headless --convert-to pdf gpredict-user-manual.odt
Warning: failed to launch javaldx - java may not function correctly
Error: source file could not be loaded

strace output shows a failed attempt to find libcuilo.so (shipped with
libreoffice-core) just before "Error: source file could not be loaded"
is output. Should libcuilo.so be included in libreoffice-core-nogui?

For the time-being, we are working around this by using
libreoffice-writer as the build-dep, but the -nogui package should be
sufficient and has worked in the past.

Thank you,
tony

[1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1058273

[Rene Engelhard]

Hi,

Am 14.12.23 um 06:01 schrieb tony mancill:

A FTBFS bug [1] cropped up in gpredict recently that appears to be to a
change in libreoffice-writer-nogui.  The build step that fails is:

$ soffice --strace --writer --headless --convert-to pdf gpredict-user-manual.odt 
Warning: failed to launch javaldx - java may not function correctly
Error: source file could not be loaded

strace output shows a failed attempt to find libcuilo.so (shipped with
libreoffice-core) just before "Error: source file could not be loaded"
is output.  Should libcuilo.so be included in libreoffice-core-nogui?

No it should not because it is *common UI*. 

That LibreOffice upstream adds options and then let it bit-rot to the point that that they don't work as intended without adding totally unrelated stuff unfortunately is a fact. :(

Here it is adding a dependency on UI stuff for something not needing UI.

In the meanwhile  I actually reget having added -nogui for this reason.

For the time-being, we are working around this by using
libreoffice-writer as the build-dep, 

That is wrong imho.

but the -nogui package should be
sufficient and has worked in the past.

Yeah. Or just adding libreoffice-core (since you *can* mix them.) See also

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1052052

Regards,

Rene

[Rene Engelhard]

Hi,

Am 14.12.23 um 07:57 schrieb Rene Engelhard:

> Hi,
>
> Am 14.12.23 um 06:01 schrieb tony mancill:
>> A FTBFS bug [1] cropped up in gpredict recently that appears to be to a
>> change in libreoffice-writer-nogui. The build step that fails is:
>>
>> $ soffice --strace --writer --headless --convert-to pdf gpredict-user-manual.odt
>> Warning: failed to launch javaldx - java may not function correctly
>> Error: source file could not be loaded
>>
>> strace output shows a failed attempt to find libcuilo.so (shipped with
>> libreoffice-core) just before "Error: source file could not be loaded"
>> is output. Should libcuilo.so be included in libreoffice-core-nogui?
>
> No it should not because it is *common UI*.
>
>
> That LibreOffice upstream adds options and then let it bit-rot to the
> point that that they don't work as intended without adding totally
> unrelated stuff unfortunately is a fact. :(
>
> Here it is adding a dependency on UI stuff for something not needing UI.

Quickly filed https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=158695 now

Regards,

Rene

[tony mancill]

Hi Rene,

On Thu, Dec 14, 2023 at 07:57:46AM +0100, Rene Engelhard wrote:
> Am 14.12.23 um 06:01 schrieb tony mancill:
> > A FTBFS bug [1] cropped up in gpredict recently that appears to be to a
> > change in libreoffice-writer-nogui. The build step that fails is:
> >
> > $ soffice --strace --writer --headless --convert-to pdf gpredict-user-manual.odt
> > Warning: failed to launch javaldx - java may not function correctly
> > Error: source file could not be loaded
> >
> > strace output shows a failed attempt to find libcuilo.so (shipped with
> > libreoffice-core) just before "Error: source file could not be loaded"
> > is output. Should libcuilo.so be included in libreoffice-core-nogui?
>
> No it should not because it is *common UI*.
>
> That LibreOffice upstream adds options and then let it bit-rot to the point
> that that they don't work as intended without adding totally unrelated stuff
> unfortunately is a fact. :(
>
> Here it is adding a dependency on UI stuff for something not needing UI.

Thank you for the explanation. (I didn't spend enough time digging into
whether the library *should* be there, I only noted that it was missing.)

> In the meanwhile  I actually reget having added -nogui for this reason.

Yeah, I can appreciate that it leads to confusion and potentially more
work for you as a maintainer.

> > For the time-being, we are working around this by using
> > libreoffice-writer as the build-dep,
> That is wrong imho.
> > but the -nogui package should be
> > sufficient and has worked in the past.
>
> Yeah. Or just adding libreoffice-core (since you *can* mix them.) See also
> https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1052052

Yes, that works. I had opted for libreoffice-writer because its
transitive dependency set is only marginally larger (70MB) than
libreoffice-core, and it allows me to specify a single build-dep related
to libreoffice, but mixing them does result is fewer overall build-deps.

(unstable-amd64-sbuild) apt-get install libreoffice-writer
...
0 upgraded, 560 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 372 MB of archives.
After this operation, 1320 MB of additional disk space will be used.

(unstable-amd64-sbuild) apt-get install libreoffice-core
...
0 upgraded, 545 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 355 MB of archives.
After this operation, 1253 MB of additional disk space will be used.

(unstable-amd64-sbuild) apt-get install libreoffice-writer-nogui
...
0 upgraded, 263 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 185 MB of archives.
After this operation, 642 MB of additional disk space will be used.


Thank you for the response and filing the bug upstream.

Cheers,
tony