"Parse error" when trying to update certain apps while "Privileged Extension" is enabled

What did you do? (clear steps if possible)

I had StreetComplete and PassAndroid installed (via F-Droid) already before updating to the current versions of Fairphone Open OS and F-Droid. Sometime after updating Fairphone Open OS and F-Droid to the current versions, F-Droid informed me about having updated several other apps (now possible due to the privileged extension) and about having downloaded updates for StreetComplete and PassAndroid.

I tried to manually update these 2 apps, too, by tapping the "update" buttons next to their list entries in F-Droid's "Updates" pane, by tapping the respective Android notifications by F-Droid or by tapping the "update" button in the search results for these apps in F-Droid.

When none of that worked, I uninstalled StreetComplete and tried to re-install it using F-Droid. Also tried installing oder versions offered by F-Droid.

What did you expect to see?

"Update" buttons (or after the de-installation, "Install") buttons in F-Droid are replaced by "Run" buttons, indicating that the latest version of these apps are installed.

What did you see instead?

With each of the update/install tries above, the following modal message appeared:

Parse error

There was a problem parsing the package.

[OK]

After tapping "OK", another modal message was displayed:

Error installing PassAndroid

Failed to install due to an unknown error

[OK]

After tapping "OK" there, too, that last message appeared again. (I.e., same as #1139 (closed) reported.) After another tap on "OK" there were no more further modal messages until the next attempt, but I think sometimes there were notifications by F-Droid informing about the failed installation.

I didn't see anything related in aLogcat, but have used it for the first time, so maybe I'm not operating it correctly.

Other

  • I was still able upgrade / install other apps (e.g. aLogcat)
  • I don't have "Incompatible versions" enabled in the F-Droid settings, so I guess this is unrelated to the reason that let to introducing this error message?
  • I didn't try to install the APK files from the file manager or to move them somewhere else, because I have no idea where F-Droid places them in the file system.
  • For the same reason, I didn't analyze them with aapt
  • In the past, I might have installed versions of these apps via Yalp Store, i.e. APKs from the Google Play Store. I'm though certain that the versions installed when attempting the updates described here were from F-Droid.
  • Enabling "Force old index format" in the F-Droid settings didn't mitigate the issue.

Workaround: Disable "Privileged Extension"

Disabling "Privileged Extension" in the F-Droid settings allowed me to re-install StreetComplete and to update PassAndroid using the respective buttons in F-Droid. This was while "Force old index format" was still enabled, but I don't know whether that matters.

Edited by Raphael Das Gupta
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