manual roll back to an old version of libreoffice?

jyoung · Guru Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 471

I just did a world update, and the new version of libreoffice has some really serious problems with copy/paste (details provided upon request). I'd like to roll back to an earlier version, but it's no longer in portage, and unfortunately I did a thorough cleaning after the update. However, I do have another machine with a very similar install which didn't get the update. Is there any safe way to pull the package info from that system?

A few side notes: This problem hasn't manifested in other applications, and it seems to be a problem with libreoffice, but I technically can't rule out the possibility that some other part of my desktop is broken. I've started a thread on the libreoffice forum about this, but copy/paste is really critical, and if I could I'd roll back now. I've also done some searching to see if anyone else has had this problem, and the answer seems to be yes: The problems discussed on the thread below seem to mostly overlap with mine, although it's not even a linux thread and many of the solutions don't apply here

https://ask.libreoffice.org/t/copy-paste-clipboard-issues-libreoffice-calc/45811/38

bstaletic · Guru Joined: 05 Apr 2014 Posts: 452

You're going to need the old ebuild. Simplest way is to take it from the other machine and put it into your local overlay.
If the two machines have the same architecture and USE flags, then you can also make a binary package on one and install it on the other.

logrusx · Advocate Joined: 22 Feb 2018 Posts: 2585

In the light of recent Gnome updates, I would support this claim in the referenced thread:

jyoung · Guru Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 471

logrusx, I'm actually running xfce. I do have some gnome applications installed. As far as I can tell, it's just the secondary clipboard that's the problem, and just with libreoffice.

bstaletic, thanks for the tip, the old version of libreoffice is compiling now. With luck, we'll find out if it is libreoffice or another issue like the compositor that's causing the problem.

jyoung · Guru Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 471

The older version (24.2.6.2) is suffering from the same problem. That seems to support the idea that it's something else, perhaps with the compositor.

However, I don't actually use libreoffice that much on the other machine, so I suppose it's possible that it's actually broken there too. I'll check and report back. The earliest version that I can roll back to is 24.2.4.2-r1, and I'll try that as well.

jyoung · Guru Joined: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 471

I just rolled back to 24.2.4.2-r1, and the problem persists.

With 24.2.7.2 and 24.2.6.2 I was also seeing another problem, when I copy or cut an object (like a text box), it turns it into an image. That problem seems to have gone away with 24.2.4.2-r1.