libffi is an undocumented dependency

[jetzerb]

On a fresh install of the azure cli on Ubuntu, using the method described on Install Azure CLI with apt, attempting to install an extension results in an error message. Adding the debug flag shows that it's due to a missing dependency on libffi (see comments on azure-cli-extensions issue # 535 on github)
Please update either this page or the page linked above to call it out as a dependency.

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Document Details

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• ID: 8ea1a0d9-c0d5-657d-f73b-0e9220bec600
• Version Independent ID: 7138b13a-3381-1aee-346b-5e7f6905c5b3
• Content: az extension
• Content Source: src/azure-cli/azure/cli/command_modules/extension/_help.py
• Service: azure-cli
• GitHub Login: @rloutlaw
• Microsoft Alias: routlaw

[yungezz]

@fengzhou-msft could you pls have a look?thanks

[fengzhou-msft]

@jetzerb which Ubuntu distro are you using? I tested on Bionic and Xenial, and the install of azure-devops can be done successfully.

For the debug log in comments, I noticed there's a mismatch between the package repo and the distro:

DEBUG: Linux distro check: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/azure-cli.list has 'wheezy', current distro is 'bionic'

And it could be the reason for the failure according to this comment.

[jetzerb]

@fengzhou-msft I am using Focal (20.04). I just tried it now and it worked fine.

I think you're right about the version mismatch. At the time, Microsoft didn't have a Ubuntu 20.04 repository, so I was overriding the installation script to pull the 19.10 version of azure-cli and creating a symlink of libffi7 to libffi6 to satisfy the older version's requirement. I removed that workaround at the end of May, at which time MS had a 20.04 package repository.

I see that libffi is installed in the base Ubuntu 20.04 container, so while it is technically a requirement, the fact that it's installed by default means that it's not practically a requirement.

[fengzhou-msft]

@fengzhou-msft I am using Focal (20.04). I just tried it now and it worked fine.

I think you're right about the version mismatch. At the time, Microsoft didn't have a Ubuntu 20.04 repository, so I was overriding the installation script to pull the 19.10 version of azure-cli and creating a symlink of libffi7 to libffi6 to satisfy the older version's requirement. I removed that workaround at the end of May, at which time MS had a 20.04 package repository.

I see that libffi is installed in the base Ubuntu 20.04 container, so while it is technically a requirement, the fact that it's installed by default means that it's not practically a requirement.

Right. And we have a troubleshooting section in case libffi is missing after installation on some old systems.