Dependency hell with various java programs

[sweasyf]

After about 2 hours wrestling with this - going through dependency hell with various java programs (yes, I remember gcc install scripts and make, make-install, dependency hell - I thought we were past that), I finally got updated. Although it was at the expense of Minecraft-launcher.
For the upcoming holidays, my grandchildren are going to want to know why I had to delete their favorite program. I don’t know any answer other than it was necessary to keep my system updated.

[deemon]

@philm

2023-11-02 - Frederik Schwan

We are introducing a change in JDK/JRE packages of our distro. This is triggered from the way a JRE is build in modern versions of Java (>9). We are introducing this change in Java 21.

To sum it up instead of having JDK and JRE packages coexist in the same system we will be making them conflict. The JDK variant package includes the runtime environment to execute Java applications so if one needs compilation and runtime of Java they need only the JDK package in the future. If, on the other hand, they need just runtime of Java then JRE (or jre-headless) will work.

This will (potentially) require a manual user action during upgrade:

• If you have both JDK and JRE installed you can manually install the JDK with pacman -S jdk-openjdk and this removes the JRE related packages.
• If you have both JRE and JRE-headless you will need to choose one of them and install it manually since they would conflict each other now.
• If you only have one of the JDK/JRE/JRE-headless pacman should resolve dependencies normally and no action is needed.

At the moment this is only valid for the upcoming JDK 21 release.

doesn’t jdk-openjdk provide everything you need?

[philm]

@deemon

doesn’t jdk-openjdk provide everything you need?

JRE is just the runtime engine. JDK adds additional development stuff and also includes the runtime engine. Before it was a split package which excluded it I assume.

[sweasyf]

doesn’t jdk-openjdk provide everything you need?
No it did not. I still had conflicts. I had some explicitly installed java apps and had to rundown “can’t delete this because that depends on it”, “Can’t delete that because these other 3 things depend on that” etc. a) I guess that’s what I get for installing things from outside the repos. b) I remembered how much I hated dependency hell. c) Everything is fine now, except I had to get rid of a game the grandkids liked, but they have their own copies of what they want on their handheld toys nowadays.

[cscs]

@sweasyf

Everything is fine now, except I had to get rid of a game the grandkids liked

But it still doesnt make sense that you cant have what you want installed … especially after you have ‘overcome’ the initial ‘dependency hell’ in order to upgrade.

Maybe thats what the thread should actually be titled and inquiring about? Since you say everything else mentioned is ‘fixed’, even at time of the original post.

So … about that.

Are you referring to minecraft-launcher package in the AUR?
One that would need a rebuild after system library updates?
Are you saying you uninstalled it instead?
Whats stopping you from building it now?

PS.
AUR Packages regularly need rebuilding when the base packages have been updated.
If you didnt know that, or how to do it … then see all about it and more here:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Arch_User_Repository