Bug 465204 - Source/origin for PackageKit apps is non-determinstic and can show nonsense
Summary: Source/origin for PackageKit apps is non-determinstic and can show nonsense
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: Discover
Classification: Applications
Component: PackageKit (show other bugs)
Version: master
Platform: Other Linux
: HI normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Plasma Bugs List
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2023-02-03 00:42 UTC by Nate Graham
Modified: 2023-02-22 00:40 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

See Also:
Latest Commit:
Version Fixed In: 5.27.2
Sentry Crash Report:


Attachments

Note You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.
Description Nate Graham 2023-02-03 00:42:20 UTC
On the application page, the text displayed in both the "Sources" dropdown and the "Distributed by" metadata field is non-deterministically. On my Fedora system, for different apps, it will display any of the following values:
"fedora"
"updates"
"installed"
"installed:"fedora

This happens because PackageKitResource has no override for displayOrigin(), causing it to fall back to origin(), which gets its data from availablePackageId(), which has the following code:

QString PackageKitResource::availablePackageId() const
{
    // First we check if it's upgradeable and use this version to display
    const QSet<QString> pkgids = backend()->upgradeablePackageId(this);
    if (!pkgids.isEmpty())
        return *pkgids.constBegin();

    const auto it = m_packages.constFind(PackageKit::Transaction::InfoAvailable);
    if (it != m_packages.constEnd())
        return it->first();
    return installedPackageId();
}

In two cases, it blindly returns the first result of an unsorted multi-item container. Thus, the seemingly random text. It *is* random!

We should either fix this logic to return a deterministic result (if it wouldn't disrupt any non-display code using it), or else override displayOrigin() to return a nice user-facing string; something like "<distro name> (<repo name> repository)"
Comment 1 Aleix Pol 2023-02-06 16:31:11 UTC
Isn't part of the problem here that the source is ever "updates" or "installed"?

Even if it was deterministic, it would not be offering a useful value.
Comment 2 Nate Graham 2023-02-06 16:39:16 UTC
Right, none of those make sense to show to the user; it's backend stuff. But we expose that backend stuff to the user because we use it to generate the display string in the way I mentioned.
Comment 3 Nate Graham 2023-02-14 20:40:17 UTC
Basically what we want is to show the pretty distro name if the app comes from a 1st-party distro repo (obscuring those ugly repo names), but do show the repo name if it comes from a 3rd-party repo.

Had a call with Aleix and it turns out this isn't really possible to do with PackageKit's current API. I've filed a ticket upstream: https://github.com/PackageKit/PackageKit/issues/607

In the meantime we can substitute the current distro name for apps from PackageKit and point people to that if they get mad at us for only showing the distro name.
Comment 4 Bug Janitor Service 2023-02-14 20:50:05 UTC
A possibly relevant merge request was started @ https://invent.kde.org/plasma/discover/-/merge_requests/474
Comment 5 Nate Graham 2023-02-22 00:32:43 UTC
Git commit 5b23cca9813d51bddac2b99aeab14d919c083787 by Nate Graham.
Committed on 22/02/2023 at 00:32.
Pushed by ngraham into branch 'master'.

Always show distro name for PackageKit apps

Discover tries to show the name of the repo that an app comes from. This
string is generally human-readable for Snap, Flatpak, KNS, and
even apps from 3rd-party PackageKit repos. But it is usually not
human-readable for apps that come from distro repos, because it's common
for distros to ship multiple repos that serve different purposes. When
we try to show the name of these repos in the UI, it's nonsense; we end
up with text like "Distributed by: xenial-security universe" and
Distributed by: updates". This text doesn't make any sense to the user
and can even be scary; imagine "Distributed by: Restricted" which is
what you can see on Ubuntu-based distros!

The user does not care about which specific distro repo the app comes
from; what they care about is that it came from their distro.

What would be ideal is if PackageKit could tell us whether a particular
PackageKit repo was 1st-party or 3rd-party. Then for 3rd-party repos we
could show the actual name (which usually ends up looking reasonably
human-readable, like "Packman" or "rpmfusion-free"), and for 1st-party
repos, we could instead substitute the distro name.

Unfortunately PackageKit doesn't have that functionality right now. See
https://github.com/PackageKit/PackageKit/issues/607.

So for now, just show the distro name for all PackageKit apps. This
fixes the nonsense strings issues, and while it does result in
inaccuracy for users who have installed 3rd-party package repos, those
users are generally technically knowledgeable enough to understand.
FIXED-IN: 5.27.2

M  +9    -2    libdiscover/backends/PackageKitBackend/PackageKitResource.cpp

https://invent.kde.org/plasma/discover/commit/5b23cca9813d51bddac2b99aeab14d919c083787
Comment 6 Nate Graham 2023-02-22 00:40:00 UTC
Git commit e6c03350a4fcd393814154f10f82f67b9d63d018 by Nate Graham.
Committed on 22/02/2023 at 00:37.
Pushed by ngraham into branch 'Plasma/5.27'.

Always show distro name for PackageKit apps

Discover tries to show the name of the repo that an app comes from. This
string is generally human-readable for Snap, Flatpak, KNS, and
even apps from 3rd-party PackageKit repos. But it is usually not
human-readable for apps that come from distro repos, because it's common
for distros to ship multiple repos that serve different purposes. When
we try to show the name of these repos in the UI, it's nonsense; we end
up with text like "Distributed by: xenial-security universe" and
Distributed by: updates". This text doesn't make any sense to the user
and can even be scary; imagine "Distributed by: Restricted" which is
what you can see on Ubuntu-based distros!

The user does not care about which specific distro repo the app comes
from; what they care about is that it came from their distro.

What would be ideal is if PackageKit could tell us whether a particular
PackageKit repo was 1st-party or 3rd-party. Then for 3rd-party repos we
could show the actual name (which usually ends up looking reasonably
human-readable, like "Packman" or "rpmfusion-free"), and for 1st-party
repos, we could instead substitute the distro name.

Unfortunately PackageKit doesn't have that functionality right now. See
https://github.com/PackageKit/PackageKit/issues/607.

So for now, just show the distro name for all PackageKit apps. This
fixes the nonsense strings issues, and while it does result in
inaccuracy for users who have installed 3rd-party package repos, those
users are generally technically knowledgeable enough to understand.
FIXED-IN: 5.27.2


(cherry picked from commit 5b23cca9813d51bddac2b99aeab14d919c083787)

M  +9    -2    libdiscover/backends/PackageKitBackend/PackageKitResource.cpp

https://invent.kde.org/plasma/discover/commit/e6c03350a4fcd393814154f10f82f67b9d63d018