openjdk-8-jre:i386 openjdk-8-jre-headless:i386 missing for noble to run existing proprietary i386 applications that link against openjdk

[Valentyna]

openjdk-8-jre:i386 openjdk-8-jre-headless:i386 packages disappeared from noble repo for amd64 arch ther exist, last week this packages were in repo

[Thorsten Glaser (mirabilos)]

Hi Vladimir,

according to https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/openjdk-8/8u402-ga-8build1 it’s built, but:

$ rmadison -u ubuntu openjdk-8-jre-headless
 openjdk-8-jre-headless | 8u77-b03-3ubuntu3 | xenial | amd64, arm64, armhf, i386, powerpc, ppc64el, s390x
[…]
 openjdk-8-jre-headless | 8u402-ga-2ubuntu1~23.10.1 | mantic-updates/universe | amd64, arm64, armhf, i386, ppc64el, s390x
 openjdk-8-jre-headless | 8u402-ga-8build1 | noble/universe | amd64, arm64, armhf, ppc64el, s390x

… it seems to have indeed gone away on i386.

[Vladimir Petko (vpa1977)]

Indeed ... I think the decision was made by archive admins to remove it because there was no use case that I could argue for to keep i386 openjdk-8.

I wonder if we can provide a convincing enough reason to reinstate the package in noble?

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

"Drop hard-coded entry for openjdk-8

In theory this entry was added for 'bootstrapping', but we have definitely
not needed openjdk-8 for bootstrapping newer openjdks for a long time.
Leave this in place for releases older than noble so we can continue to
provide security support for it as needed, but make sure we don't wrongly
carry it forward."

https://git.launchpad.net/ubuntu-archive-tools/commit/?id=64fae2d640cee3ffe489419cce7a547f3c3530e9

openjdk versions had been hard-coded for i386 in a python script instead of going through the standard process for seeding of packages. This had several consequences, including the fact that dependencies were not automatically resolved by germinate. As part of the discussions around jdk test dependencies in Ubuntu 24.04, I started to look at cleaning up this hard-coding and was told that our previous reasons for needing openjdk-8 i386 binaries no longer applied.

It is possible to restore this in 24.04 but someone would need to present a use case for it.

[Thorsten Glaser (mirabilos)]

It seems that openjdk-8 has so many users, even on i386, that they noticed this basically immediately (hence this bugreport in the first case).

What they use it for, they’ll have to say themselves, of course…

(And it’s not like we could just provide it in a PPA for them, as PPAs are not allowed to build for i386 any more.)

[Valentyna (valia0906)]

I have about 10 applications that run using i386 openjdk-8.

[Vladimir Petko (vpa1977)]

I apologise for this situation. I wonder if i386 is used due to the hardware or other constraints that make switching to amd64 impossible?

[Valentyna (valia0906)]

For now switching to amd64 is impossible because of developer team are not currently able to modify the code for i386 arch.

[Vladimir Petko (vpa1977)]

Would it be ok to update the bug like this:
 - openjdk-8:i386 is required for our users to run existing proprietary i386 applications that link against openjdk.

i386 openjdk availability:
 - Temurin[1] does not provide those builds.
 - Azul[2] has x86 build
 - Bellsoft[3] has x86 build.

Continuing to provide openjdk-8:i386 in noble will allow our users to migrate to the latest LTS without installing 3rd party jdk.

[1] https://adoptium.net/en-GB/temurin/releases/?version=8&os=linux&arch=x86&package=jdk
[2] https://www.azul.com/downloads/?version=java-8-lts&os=linux&architecture=x86-32-bit&package=jdk#zulu
[3] https://bell-sw.com/pages/downloads/#jdk-8-lts

[Matthias Klose (doko)]

On 27.04.24 00:39, Steve Langasek wrote:
> "Drop hard-coded entry for openjdk-8
>
> In theory this entry was added for 'bootstrapping',

correct.

> but we have definitely
> not needed openjdk-8 for bootstrapping newer openjdks for a long time.

but it's needed to start building openjdk-8 on i386 on new releases.

> It is possible to restore this in 24.04 but someone would need to
> present a use case for it.

the use case should be known to you, it didn't change over time. There
are legacy apps built for i386 only, also using the client VM for i386.

[Valentyna (valia0906)]

I use proprietary applications which need i386 openjdk, the name and code I cannot post due to the rules of my company.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

The openjdk-8 i386 binaries have been restored in noble-updates. I am working through the necessary changes so that this is properly documented as a whitelisted package and will not be inadvertently dropped going forward.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

openjdk-8-jre is now seeded for noble and later.