Javac: invalid target release: 11 despite having jre11-openjdk

[mmahmoudian]

I have installed and used fastqc from AUR before and recently when I tried to update, I got issues. I investigated the issue to the best of my abilities and also I sought help on the Github page of the AUR maintainer which you can read.

Long story short, I have jre11 and jre8 installed:

❯  pamac list --installed | grep "jre"
jre11-openjdk                             11.0.19.u7-1                  extra      551.0 kB
jre11-openjdk-headless                    11.0.19.u7-1                  extra      167.6 MB
jre8-openjdk                              8.372.u07-1                   extra      417.2 kB
jre8-openjdk-headless                     8.372.u07-1                   extra      104.1 MB

and this is the error I get:

[javac] javac: invalid target release: 11

I have tested this on Arch in a clean-install VM, and it builds just fine with the jre11-openjdk as the following video attests:

I waited over a month before posting here, hoping that some update on Manjaro jre version solves the issue (as I cannot decipher why it is not working). But now in accordance to the maintainer’s suggestion I’m opening this thread hoping for some useful tips and solution.

[leledumbo]

Please install JDK instead of JRE. JRE is a runtime only environment, JDK is required for compilation. So despite you have JRE 11, your JDK might be… I don’t know, 8?

[mithrial]

javac is only included in the JDK packages.

Also, use the script archlinux-java to set the global version. See here:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Java

[mmahmoudian]

@leledumbo @mithrial Thanks for your comments. but I already have the JDK:

❯  pamac list --installed | grep '^j[(re)(dk)]'
jdk11-openjdk                             11.0.19.u7-1                  extra      337.9 MB
jdk8-openjdk                              8.372.u07-1                   extra      40.4 MB
jemalloc                                  1:5.3.0-2                     extra      2.1 MB
jre11-openjdk                             11.0.19.u7-1                  extra      551.0 kB
jre11-openjdk-headless                    11.0.19.u7-1                  extra      167.6 MB
jre8-openjdk                              8.372.u07-1                   extra      417.2 kB
jre8-openjdk-headless                     8.372.u07-1                   extra      104.1 MB

and javac is in the path:

❯  ls -al $(which javac)
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 30 Jan 19 14:33 /usr/bin/javac -> /usr/lib/jvm/default/bin/javac

❯  javac -version                                                                                         -ErrorCode:2-
javac 1.8.0_372

[mmahmoudian]

Ok, thanks for the your constructive comments. Although I had JDKs installed, the archlinux-java which @mithrial mentioned was the key:

❯  archlinux-java status
Available Java environments:
  java-11-openjdk
  java-8-openjdk (default)

So by changing the version the issue was resolved:

archlinux-java set java-11-openjdk