package libreoffice-common 1:6.0.7-0ubuntu0.18.04.13 failed to install/upgrade: conflicting packages - not installing libreoffice-common

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

This seems to be a package ordering issue/regression in apt or dpkg. While apparmor in focal is 2.13.3 and therefore sufficient to the needs of libreoffice, it would be easier to apply a mitigation to libreoffice in focal.

I'm concerned about this patch:

A versioned Conflicts entry is not something that someone adds lightly -- probably an abstraction file or policy language feature was added in that version of AppArmor, and policy compilation will fail if that version isn't installed before the newer versions of the LibreOffice packages are installed. That will probably be even more confusing to diagnose and repair than this error.

This patch also suggests that:

(a) perhaps do-release-upgrade needs to be modified to change the order of package updates
(b) perhaps apt needs to be investigated to find out why the incorrect package order was selected
(c) perhaps the Debian policy needs to be consulted to make sure that a Conflicts: entry is actually the right way to ask apt for the necessary package ordering.

It's three years since Focal release. Surely we've had a few LibreOffice users upgrade from Bionic to Focal in those three years. Why is this only showing up in Launchpad today?

I recommend further research into why this happened before trying to patch it.

Thanks

Thanks for taking a look.

I absolutely agree that it seems libreoffice is not at fault here while it worked over the years without this issue being raised.

Therefore some kind of bug/regression in apt/dpkg seems possible.