[Bug 1843063] Re: lshw -json output invalid in Eoan

[Jeff Lane]

https://ezix.org/project/wiki  the source is there, however, there are
several JSON related bugs, some of which seem to be the same as this,
but have been open for several years without update.

We may need to fix this ourselves.

** Also affects: plainbox-provider-checkbox
   Importance: Undecided
       Status: New

** Changed in: plainbox-provider-checkbox
   Importance: Undecided => High

** Changed in: plainbox-provider-checkbox
       Status: New => Confirmed

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1843063

Title:
  lshw -json output invalid in Eoan

Status in Provider for Plainbox - Checkbox:
  Confirmed
Status in lshw package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  Beginning with Ubuntu 19.10 (Eoan) pre-release versions, the "lshw
  -json" output appears to be invalid, and can't be parsed with either
  Python's json library or the jq stand-alone command:

  $ sudo lshw -json | jq .
  parse error: Expected separator between values at line 25, column 8

  The Python json library reports "Expecting ',' delimiter: line 25
  column 8 (char 718)".

  The first offending snippet looks like this:

    "capabilities" : {
      "smbios-2.7" : "SMBIOS version 2.7",
      "dmi-2.7" : "DMI version 2.7",
      "smp" : "Symmetric Multi-Processing",
      "vsyscall32" : "32-bit processes"
    }    {
        "id" : "core",
        "class" : "bus",

  Note the "}    {" line. In pre-Eoan versions of Ubuntu, the equivalent
  snippet looks like this:

    "capabilities" : {
      "smbios-2.7" : "SMBIOS version 2.7",
      "dmi-2.7" : "DMI version 2.7",
      "vsyscall32" : "32-bit processes"
    },
    "children" : [
      {
        "id" : "core",
        "class" : "bus",

  It looks like the new version is dropping the ', "children" : [' part.

  On the offending system:

  $ lsb_release -rd
  Description:	Ubuntu Eoan Ermine (development branch)
  Release:	19.10

  $ apt-cache policy lshw
  lshw:
    Installed: 02.18.85-0.3
    Candidate: 02.18.85-0.3
    Version table:
   *** 02.18.85-0.3 500
          500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu eoan/main amd64 Packages
          100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

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