Installing TweetDeck with Adobe AIR on Fedora 15

Unfortunately, there is a problem installing TweakDeck on Fedora 15, and even more unfortunately, it does not look like it will be fixed.

Using the 'TechnoZeal' instructions, I had no difficulty installing Adobe AIR on Fedora 15 (64-bit), although AIR seems to be a 32-bit application and so you will need to install many 32-bit library files.

[nwsmith@fed15-x64 ~]$ rpm -qa | grep -i adobe
adobe-release-i386-1.0-1.noarch
adobeair-2.6.0-19170.i386

I downloaded the latest TweakDeck '.air' file:

[nwsmith@fed15-x64 Downloads]$ ll
-rw-rw-r--. 1 nwsmith nwsmith 2373967 Jun 30 20:46 TweetDeck_0_37.6.air
[nwsmith@fed15-x64 Downloads]$ md5sum -b TweetDeck_0_37.6.air 
d8dc9c0fbff37c31c8af6a788854cb25 *TweetDeck_0_37.6.air

..but when you try to install it, it aborts with error message:

Sorry, an error has occured.
The application could not be installed because the installer file is
damaged. Try obtaining a new installer file from the application author.

Eventually I discovered that the 'Adobe AIR Application Installer' was recording a log file:

[nwsmith@fed15-x64 ~]$ cd /home/nwsmith/.appdata/Adobe/AIR/Logs/
[nwsmith@fed15-x64 Logs]$ ll
-rw-rw-r--. 1 nwsmith nwsmith 83863 Jun 30 21:41 Install.log
[nwsmith@fed15-x64 Logs]$ cat Install.log 
[Adobe AIR Application Installer:4156][INFO] Application Installer begin with version 2.6.0.19170 on Linux x86
[Adobe AIR Application Installer:4156][INFO] Commandline is: 
[Adobe AIR Application Installer:4156][INFO] Installed runtime (2.6.0.19170) located at /opt/Adobe AIR
[Adobe AIR Application Installer:4156][INFO] Cancel request received
[Adobe AIR Application Installer:4156][INFO] Application Installer end with exit code 6
[Adobe AIR Application Installer:4192][INFO] Application Installer begin with version 2.6.0.19170 on Linux x86
[Adobe AIR Application Installer:4192][INFO] Commandline is: 
[Adobe AIR Application Installer:4192][INFO] Installed runtime (2.6.0.19170) located at /opt/Adobe AIR
[Adobe AIR Application Installer:4192][INFO] Unpackaging file:///home/nwsmith/Downloads/TweetDeck_0_37.6.air to /tmp/FlashTmp.NhdYfW
[Adobe AIR Application Installer:4192][INFO] Application signature verified
[Adobe AIR Application Installer:4192][INFO] Unpackaging/validation complete
[Adobe AIR Application Installer:4192][INFO] No app located for appID 'TweetDeckFast' and pubID 'FFF259DC0CE2657847BBB4AFF0E62062EFC56543.1'
[Adobe AIR Application Installer:4192][INFO] Converting unpackaged application to a native installation package in /tmp/FlashTmp.wkEIg0
[Adobe AIR Application Installer:4192][ERR] Native installation package creation failed: [ErrorEvent type="error" bubbles=false cancelable=false eventPhase=2 text="Unhandled exception Error: Error creating the package /opt/Adobe AIR/Versions/1.0/Resources/rpmbuilder error : symbol not found: parseSpec, /usr/lib/librpmbuild.so: undefined symbol: parseSpec error :
<-- SNIP-->
File not found: /tmp/FlashTmp.wkEIg0/build/usr/share/app-install/desktop/tweetdeckfast.fff259dc0ce2657847bbb4aff0e62062efc56543.1.desktop" errorID=1]
[Adobe AIR Application Installer:4192][ERR] Application Installer end with exit code 7

So Googling on "symbol not found: parseSpec" we find these links:

• Problem with air application installer on Fedora 15 linux


• Bug 692381 - missing parseSpec in librpmbuild.so

...where Panu Matilainen summaries:

"Yes, the entire librpmbuild API has changed in rpm 4.9.x and parseSpec() no
longer exists, it's been replaced by a new saner interface known as
rpmSpecParse(). Air (whatever it is, apparently some Adobe proprietary app)
appears to be cheating against soname changes by using the non-versioned -devel
.so symlink and now gets burned because of it. It'd be much better off
launching rpmbuild than using the librpmbuild API.

And yes, Fedora 15 is using rpm 4.9.x:

[nwsmith@fed15-x64 ~]$ rpm -qa | grep ^rpm | sort
rpm-4.9.0-9.fc15.x86_64
rpm-build-4.9.0-9.fc15.x86_64
rpm-build-libs-4.9.0-9.fc15.i686
rpm-build-libs-4.9.0-9.fc15.x86_64
rpm-devel-4.9.0-9.fc15.i686
rpm-devel-4.9.0-9.fc15.x86_64
rpm-libs-4.9.0-9.fc15.i686
rpm-libs-4.9.0-9.fc15.x86_64
rpm-python-4.9.0-9.fc15.x86_64

So it looks like Adobe need to fix it. Unfortunately, we read here that:

"Note: Beginning June 14 2011, Adobe AIR is no longer supported for desktop Linux distributions."

So I've given up on this. A pity as it would have been really nice to run TweetDeck on Fedora Linux. Anyway now I guess I can remove all those 32-bit libraries I just install, and revert to a 'clean' 64-bit environment.

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Status Update: 2011-07-15
Please read Sérgio Basto's comments to this post. Sérgio seems to have found a way around the problem, using Mock. I've not yet tried this for myself, but I will give it a try when I have a few minutes to spare. If anyone else tried this method, please post a comment with your result.

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Status Update: 2011-07-22
Chris Beckenbach is reporting success with Sergio's method.