arduino package is outdated

[Charlie Stott]

$ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS
Release: 18.04

$ apt-cache policy arduino
arduino:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 2:1.0.5+dfsg2-4.1
  Version table:
     2:1.0.5+dfsg2-4.1 500
        500 http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic/universe amd64 Packages
        500 http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic/universe i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

I expected to be able to use the package in a familiar way without having to update all the libraries and boards manually.

The package installed from the repo does not work with the installed java and throws an exception.

java.lang.NullPointerException thrown while loading gnu.io.RXTXCommDriver

While this can be worked around by installing Oracle Java 8, arduino still cannot build projects made with later versions, due to missing libraries and boards.

The latest version of arduino is tested and runs well on 18.xx

Is this package being maintained or does it need a new owner or collaborator?

[Hans Joachim Desserud (hjd)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better.

The specific error message "java.lang.NullPointerException thrown while loading gnu.io.RXTXCommDriver" is already reported as bug 1770604 so I am marking this as a duplicate. Please look at the other bug report to see if there is any missing information that you can provide, or to see if there is a workaround for the bug. Additionally, any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in the other report.

The more general of the package being out of date has been discussed in bug 1425677 and the corresponding Debian bug report linked, and there seems to be someone working on it recently.

Feel free to continue to report any other bugs you may find.