Issue with codecs pack in the Boutique after upgrade to 18.10

Development Discussion
#1

I’ve upgraded to Ubuntu MATE 18.10 and… it was an absolute mess. After having managed to complete the installation, I cleaned a lot of obsolete packages with Synaptic. Among them was gstreamer1.0-fluendo-mp3 that doesn’t seem to be in the 18.10 repos anymore.

The issue is that if I go to the Boutique or Welcome and try to reinstall or uninstall the codecs pack, I get an error message saying that it can’t find this gstreamer package, so it looks like it’s referencing it (at least on my system). Even weirder: I though that this codecs pack was simply matching the package ubuntu-restricted-extras but after removing it and its dependencies, the codecs pack is still shown as installed in the Boutique, so it looks like it references other packages. Anybody knows which ones, so I can remove them manually? (and reinstall them properly to fix this ghost dependency issue.)

EDIT: I reinstalled the bionic version of the gstreamer package and was able to remove the codecs pack, which removed, among others, Rhythmbox, Sound Converter and Subtitle Editor. I was able to reinstall them with no issue but I can’t reinstall this codecs pack because it’s looking for gstreamer1.0-fluendo-mp3. Looks like a bug with the list of packages it installs rather than an issue specific to my system.

EDIT: is it normal that my post has been put in the section for the development version now that Cosmic has been officially released (I made the upgrade after it was)?

#2

See here…

gstreamer1.0-fluendo-mp3 is unavailable.

Looks like it hasn’t been patched to Cosmic yet…

#3

That’s weird: it means it is supposed to be in the Cosmic repos but has been forgotten? I was wondering if it had been replaced by a different package, as I don’t seem to have issues playing/encoding MP3.

Anyway, is there a way to see what the “metapackages” that are specific to the MATE Boutique install, to check if there’s indeed a dependency on this specific package or if it’s an issue specific to my system because of a cascade of dependencies related to a package I have installed but isn’t on a fresh UM install? I’ll check a fresh install of 18.10 in a VM to see if the codecs pack has issues too but this could be handy to see what the Boutique installs (in general, beyond this specific issue).

#4

By looking at the code, it looks like the following are installed:

"install-packages": [
                "libavcodec-extra",
                "gstreamer1.0-plugins-good",
                "gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad",
                "gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly",
                "gstreamer1.0-fluendo-mp3",
                "gstreamer1.0-libav"
            ],
#5

Ok, so it doesn’t install ubuntu-restricted-extras but is kind of an alternative. I’ve just tried on a fresh UM 18.10 and the codecs pack doesn’t install, as expected. I’ll file a bug report. (EDIT: done).

1 Like
#6

The problem is not with boutique app itself but with a package that you install via boutique so the bug report it’s invalid.

#8

Actually, that particular package you do not want to install anyway, as it degrades the sound quality of MP3 files (unless you buy a commercial license).

1 Like
#9

Yes, it’s a package that is installed through the Boutique but it’s one of those that are specific to it, some kind of metapackage that is made by the Ubuntu MATE team. So, where should I report it?

#10

Personally, I don’t really want to install it, but it’s done by the Ubuntu MATE Boutique when installing the “extra codecs” stuff. And it’s currently broken on 18.10. It would probably be better to just remove it from the list of packages the extra codecs install, then, and replace it by something better.

#11

Turns out gstreamer1.0-fluendo-mp3 was intentionally removed in 18.10, so it has been removed from Software Boutique.

Didn’t realise till now we had that in the list. I too can confirm 5 years ago the quality of that codec is yuck! :disappointed_relieved:

2 Likes
#12

Thanks. How do I update Welcome/the Boutique now that they’re snap packages? Is it done automatically from time to time and I just have to wait a few hours/days?

#13

You can manually update via sudo snap refresh.

#14

Thanks. But after telling me that my snap packages are up to date, the issue is still present in the Boutique. I assume the change hasn’t been deployed yet? I’m not complaining, it’s just that the message from @lah7 seemed to say that it has been fixed so I’m a bit confused.

EDIT: just refreshed the snaps again and the Boutique has been updated. Can confirm that the original issue is now gone for good.