I cannot uninstall Jami via GNOME Software

When I select uninstall, nothing happens. However, other apps can be removed.

I have installed version: 202408241514. The following package source is installed:

What surprises me is that ‘0 apps installed’ is displayed. However, I think this was already the case before I tried to uninstall Jami.

Still does not work with Build ID: 202410191509.

@sblin @pnicolas

@ahatziiliou @atraczyk @ffauteux-chapleau

I was able to reproduce the issue in a Fedora 40 VM. I ran

gnome-software --verbose
journalctl --user --boot -f "$(which gnome-software)"

as suggested here in order to see the logs produced by GNOME Software when trying to uninstall Jami. Here is what I got:

Dec 09 11:32:46 fedora gnome-software[2975]: modal dialog 0x55848f658bd0 unmapped
Dec 09 11:32:46 fedora gnome-software[2975]: uninstall net.jami.Jami
Dec 09 11:32:46 fedora gnome-software[2975]: Chaining cancellation from 0x558475485f50 to 0x55848923fb20
Dec 09 11:32:46 fedora gnome-software[2975]: nothing adopted system/*/*/net.jami.Jami/*
Dec 09 11:32:46 fedora gnome-software[2975]: Setting I/O priority of thread 0x55847558b3c0 to IDLE, 7
Dec 09 11:32:46 fedora gnome-software[2975]: Setting I/O priority of thread 0x558474f22670 to IDLE, 7
Dec 09 11:32:46 fedora gnome-software[2975]: Setting I/O priority of thread 0x558474f2d370 to IDLE, 7
Dec 09 11:32:46 fedora gnome-software[2975]: ignoring /usr/share/applications/net.jami.Jami as does not exist
Dec 09 11:32:46 fedora gnome-software[2975]: running Refine job with dedupe-flags=7, elapsed time since creation 5ms
Dec 09 11:32:46 fedora gnome-software[2975]: running remove on plugin=packagekit with dedupe-flags=7 with refine-flags=require-setup-action,require-origin with interactive=True with propagate-error=True on apps system/*/*/net.jami.Jami/*, elapsed time since creation 6ms

So it looks like it's expecting but failing to find a file named net.jami.Jami in the /usr/share/applications/ directory. I do see a jami.desktop file in that directory, so I'm guessing there's probably a configuration error somewhere in our rpm build.

@ffauteux-chapleau Thanks for having a look!

By the way, it doesn't work for me with Fedora 41 either. Can you reproduce this as well?

@anna Yes. I kept looking after sending my previous message and saw that net.jami.Jami is the application id in the jami.appdata.xml file. I was able to uninstall Jami after replacing net.jami.Jami by jami.desktop and restarting GNOME Software. (I only did this on Fedora 40 and Fedora 41, but given that the contents of jami.appdata.xml are always the same, I expect this bug to be present on all other distros where Jami is available.)

So you assume that it is not possible to uninstall Jami again for all Linux users who have installed it via https://jami.net/download-jami-linux/?

Would this also be an issue with a deb or Snap installations?

Do you also have an explanation why it says ‘0 apps installed’?

So you assume that it is not possible to uninstall Jami again for all Linux users who have installed it via https://jami.net/download-jami-linux/?

It's always possible to uninstall Jami via the system's package manager. On Fedora you would just need to enter the following command in a terminal:

sudo dnf autoremove jami

What I was saying earlier is that uninstalling Jami specifically via GNOME Software probably doesn't work on any distro currently.

Do you also have an explanation why it says ‘0 apps installed’?

It's probably due to some missing metadata somewhere, but I don't know enough about how GNOME Software works to say for sure.

It's always possible to uninstall Jami via the system's package manager. On Fedora you would just need to enter the following command in a terminal:

sudo dnf autoremove jami

@ffauteux-chapleau I would appreciate it if you would investigate a solution for the graphical user interface.

What I was saying earlier is that uninstalling Jami specifically via GNOME Software probably doesn't work on any distro currently.

As I understood from your post above, it's about file names and directories. How is this then only an issue with GNOME software and not also with other package managers and their graphical user interfaces?

As I understood from your post above, it's about file names and directories.

The issue had to do with AppStream, which is a standardized way to provide metadata about an application. When you click on an app in GNOME Software, the information you see (screenshots, description, links to the app's website, etc.) comes from a certain type of AppStream configuration file called a "metainfo" file. Jami does provide a metainfo file, which is why you could see it in GNOME Software. I originally thought that the issue was due to errors in this file, but the real problem is that there is a second type of AppStream configuration file, called a "catalog", which we also need to provide (but didn't). It seems that without the "catalog" file, GNOME Software isn't able to figure out which package the metainfo belongs to (and therefore can't uninstall it).

How is this then only an issue with GNOME software and not also with other package managers and their graphical user interfaces?

The information contained in AppStream files is not needed (and not used) by command-line package managers like dnf or apt. It's possible that there are other graphical programs besides GNOME Software that have the same issue, but that's not necessarily the case depending on how they are designed. In fact, I tested GNOME Software on Ubuntu 24.10 and there it's able to uninstall Jami (even without my fix)! I haven't taken the time to investigate why it works on Ubuntu even though it doesn't on Fedora; possibly it's related to the fact that one is deb-based while the other is rpm-based.

Do you also have an explanation why it says ‘0 apps installed’?

It's probably due to some missing metadata somewhere, but I don't know enough about how GNOME Software works to say for sure.

@sblin Could you contribute to the solution here?

@sblin is not part of the team anymore. @ffauteux-chapleau is in charge now.

He says that he is currently not that deep into it. That's why I asked @sblin.

It seems that he still visits this project as a user just like you and me https://git.jami.net/AmarOk1412?

But obviously now other developers are responsible for bug fixes.

It seems that he still visits this project as a user

Exactly.

@sblin is not part of the team anymore. @ffauteux-chapleau is in charge now.

@ffauteux-chapleau @pnicolas Who in your team can address and fix the issue? After all, the named workaround is not obvious to users either.

I'm taking care of it. I have a patch that seems to solve both issues (app can't be uninstalled + "0 apps installed" message shown under Jami repo) on all the distributions I've tested so far: Fedora 39/40/41, openSUSE 15.4/15.5, AlmaLinux 9. (The only exception was that I still see "0 apps installed" on Fedora 41, but I don't think that's a Jami bug because other repos seem to have the same issue on Fedora 41.)

There's still a bit more testing to be done but I expect the fix will be included in the next stable Jami release.

assigned to @ffauteux-chapleau

added packaging severitylow sprintin progress labels

mentioned in commit 49d83fd9

added sprintdone label and removed sprintin progress label

closed