`Error setting finalizer on Installation` errors in operator logs

[dwyart]

Hi!

We are deploying Calico for NetworkPolicies in EKS clusters (using VPC CNI), using ArgoCD and the Operator Helm Chart. We could have missed it completely as everything works fine, but we noticed by chance errors appearing for time to time in the Operator logs, with messages:

Error setting finalizer on Installation
[...]
Operation cannot be fulfilled on installations.operator.tigera.io \"default\": the object has been modified; please apply your changes to the latest version and try again

We thought about an "ownership conflict" between Argo and the operator, so on Argo side, we tried

    syncOptions:
        - ServerSideApply=true
        - CreateNamespace=true
        - RespectIgnoreDifferences=true
    ignoreDifferences:
      - group: operator.tigera.io/v1
        kind: Installation
        name: default
        jsonPointers:
        - /metadata/finalizers

but it has no effect (we thought this would ask Argo to ignore any changes in the finalizers field and never try to change it on its side).

Re-creating the Installation object from scratch (manual deletion + re-creation by Argo) also has not effect, the error comes back after some time...

We are about to stop investigating, hoping the error is harmless. Would someone know what could be the root cause and if we should be worried about it?

Thanks a lot!