Bug#1006647: libeclipse-jdt-core-java 4.21 breaks Java 8 compatibility for Tomcat

[Per Lundberg]

Hi Markus,

On 2022-03-02 14:15, Markus Koschany wrote:

> As a matter of fact OpenJDK 11 is the only supported Java version in oldstable,
> stable and testing right now. We plan to release with Java 17 next year and one
> of our goals is to ship only Tomcat 10 in Debian 12 "Bookworm". I think you are
> right that we should tighten the dependency to java11-runtime-headless to avoid
> any confusion but as I said, OpenJDK 11 is the only supported JDK/JRE at the
> moment. If you cannot upgrade your application to Java 11, then you could
> create a custom Tomcat 9 package or simply downgrade libeclipse-jdt-core-java
> to 4.20 again.

Thanks for clarifying these things and mentioning the plan from the 
Debian Java maintainers in this case. I remember discussing something 
similar (JDK 11 only to be supported) a few years ago with you in fact; 
the problem was with visualvm at that time. :)

(Speaking about tomcat10, I noted the package in experimental is really 
old - doesn't seem to have been updated for a few years. Do you know if 
anyone is working on updating the package to e.g. Tomcat 10.0.17 or will 
it perhaps happen later in the Bookworm release cycle?)

Also, I wonder if it wouldn't even make sense to remove openjdk-8-jdk 
altogether from unstable at this point. The fact that it's present there 
is actually a bit confusing, since it gives the (completely false) 
impression that JDK 8 will be supported in future versions of Debian. If 
you agree, I can file a separate removal bug on that package. (I'm not 
currently a Debian maintainer myself, so I cannot help out more than 
that. ;)

As for the actual libeclipse-jdt-core-java package, is there any 
particular reason for going with the 4.21 version in Debian unstable & 
bookworm? I am just curious. It feels like a somewhat odd decision to go 
with a more recent version than the 4.20 version which Apache bundles in 
their distribution. But perhaps there are other Debian packages which 
can find use of the newer package, or has it perhaps just been done to 
be able to ship the "latest and greatest" version of this package with 
Bookworm? (I mean: to not ship something which is "old" already at the 
time of release.)

Best regards,
Per