Call for testing: libreoffice based on core18

Description

LibreOffice is a free and open source office suite, developed by The Document Foundation. The LibreOffice suite comprises programs for word processing, the creation and editing of spreadsheets, slideshows, diagrams and drawings, working with databases, and composing mathematical formulae.

Version 6.1.3.2 is the latest stable release from The Document Foundation.

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This is a new build based on core18. It has been thoroughly tested internally on all supported Ubuntu releases (from trusty to cosmic), debian testing and fedora 28, and is now open for wider testing.

How to install

snap install libreoffice --candidate

or, if you’re already using the libreoffice snap from the stable channel:

snap refresh libreoffice --candidate

Note that the snap can coexist with the ubuntu packages. If you wish to remove the ubuntu packages to use solely the snap, you can do:

sudo apt remove “libreoffice*”
sudo apt autoremove

Requested Setups

At the moment that version of the snap is available for amd64 processors only.

Known issues

Known bugs are tracked on launchpad.

Specific Tests

I’m interested in your feedback on any tasks you perform using all the apps in the libreoffice suite.

Please report any issues you encounter in this thread, especially those that appear to be regressions from the version in the stable channel (which is based on core16). Thanks!

Installed it and observed that the theme does not seem to match my default Ubuntu 18.04. Now it looks like this:

When it used to look like this:

2 Likes

@pachulo can you share the output of:

snap interfaces libreoffice

Same thing here, the theme is wrong (not that it matters too much, really…) Running on Ubuntu 18.10, the following interfaces are connected for libreoffice:

:bluez
:cups-control
:desktop
:gsettings
:home
:network
:network-bind
:opengl
:pulseaudio
:removable-media
:screen-inhibit-control
:unity7
:wayland
gtk-common-themes:gtk-3-themes
gtk-common-themes:icon-themes
gtk-common-themes:sound-themes

1 Like

Well this is very curious. I cannot observe theme problems in clean virtual machines (18.04 and 18.10). However on my work laptop running up-to-date 18.10, with the exact same revisions of core, core18, gtk-common-themes and libreoffice, I’m seeing some theme elements that look different (background color of the toolbars and menu items).

Edit: after removing the libreoffice snap and installing it again from the candidate channel, those theming discrepancies are gone. It appears that somehow, refreshing from stable to candidate messed up the connections with gtk-common-themes?

@pachulo, @jzimm: could you please test the following and report whether that improves things?

snap disconnect libreoffice:gtk-3-themes
snap connect libreoffice:gtk-3-themes gtk-common-themes:gtk-3-themes

Interestingly this seems to fix it.

This is my output for the libreoffice interfaces:

$ snap interfaces libreoffice
Slot                            Plug
:cups-control                   chromium,libreoffice
:desktop                        chromium,gimp,gnome-calculator,gnome-characters,gnome-logs,gnome-system-monitor,libreoffice,musescore,nextcloud-client,picard,qownnotes,spotify,telegram-desktop
:gsettings                      chromium,gimp,gnome-calculator,gnome-characters,gnome-logs,gnome-system-monitor,keepassxc,libreoffice,musescore,picard,spotify,telegram-desktop
:home                           chromium,gimp,gnome-characters,gnome-logs,keepassxc,libreoffice,musescore,nextcloud-client,picard,qownnotes,spotify,telegram-desktop
:network                        chromium,gimp,gnome-calculator,gnome-logs,keepassxc,libreoffice,lxd,musescore,nextcloud-client,picard,qownnotes,spotify,telegram-desktop
:network-bind                   keepassxc,libreoffice,lxd,musescore,nextcloud-client,picard,qownnotes,telegram-desktop
:opengl                         chromium,gimp,keepassxc,libreoffice,musescore,nextcloud-client,picard,qownnotes,spotify
:pulseaudio                     chromium,libreoffice,musescore,picard,spotify,telegram-desktop
:removable-media                libreoffice
:screen-inhibit-control         chromium,libreoffice
:unity7                         chromium,gimp,gnome-calculator,gnome-characters,gnome-logs,gnome-system-monitor,keepassxc,libreoffice,musescore,nextcloud-client,picard,qownnotes,spotify,telegram-desktop
:wayland                        gimp,gnome-calculator,gnome-characters,gnome-logs,gnome-system-monitor,keepassxc,libreoffice,musescore,nextcloud-client,picard,spotify
gtk-common-themes:gtk-3-themes  chromium,gimp,gnome-calculator,gnome-characters,gnome-logs,gnome-system-monitor,libreoffice
gtk-common-themes:icon-themes   chromium,gimp,gnome-calculator,gnome-characters,gnome-logs,gnome-system-monitor,libreoffice
gtk-common-themes:sound-themes  chromium,gimp,gnome-calculator,gnome-characters,gnome-logs,gnome-system-monitor,libreoffice
-                               libreoffice:bluez

Disconnecting and connecting again did not work for me, I’m still seeing the “new look”.

Not even installing from scratch with:
$ sudo snap install libreoffice --candidate
Did work…

@pachulo Which distro and which release are you using?

Also, which revisions of core, core18 and gtk-common-themes are installed?

1 Like

I’m on Ubuntu 18.04, using Gnome with the default theme and Wayland.

Regarding snap revisions, here you go:

$ snap list --all
Name                  Version                  Rev   Tracking   Publisher         Notes
core                  16-2.36.1                5897  candidate  canonicalâś“        core
core18                18                       442   stable     canonicalâś“        base
gtk-common-themes     0.1-4-g88bc1b2           818   stable     canonicalâś“        -
libreoffice           6.1.3.2                  91    candidate  canonicalâś“        -

I can observe the problem in a Wayland session. Looking into it.

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usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/10_ubuntu-settings.gschema.override is missing from the core18-based snap, adding it back seems to fix the issue (see that other thread for details).

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For what it is worth, there has been some movement on this upstream. xdg-desktop-portal has gained an extra interface to expose some common “desktop settings” schemas via D-Bus, and GTK’s Wayland implementation of “GtkSettings” will use that rather than GSettings when it detects it is being run under confinement.

That doesn’t help us right now, since (a) we’d need to ship a newer xdg-desktop-portal, and (b) we’d need snapped apps to bundle the newer GTK.

This should be fixed with the latest revision (93) in the candidate channel.
@pachulo, can you test and confirm?

I confirm that the theme is the correct now! Thanks a lot @oSoMoN!

By the way, which workaround did you apply in the end?

I added back usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/10_ubuntu-settings.gschema.override to the snap, which I had unintentionally removed when cleaning things up after switching to a core18 base.

2 Likes

libreoffice 6.1.3.2 based on core18 was now promoted to the stable channel.
Because of a problem with core18 on Fedora 29, the core16-based snap is still available in the stable/core16 channel.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to test and provide feedback!

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