F-Droid build failed

[linsui]

Could you please update the gradle so that it works with jdk 21? Thanks!

[forrestguice]

No, not without difficulty.

I don't understand why the Suntimes build succeeded but the SuntimesCalendars failed. Their targets, dependencies, etc, are the same.

[linsui]

Suntimes has been built with jdk 11 from bullseye since long time ago. We are building on trixie now so we'd better not using jdk from oldoldstable.

[forrestguice]

https://docs.gradle.org/current/userguide/compatibility.html
I have no intention of changing the gradle version, agp version, just to support the newer jdk, especially on a patch release.
Am I misunderstanding this table?

[linsui]

No, the table is correct and we need gradle 8.5+ for jdk 21.

[forrestguice]

Again, it is unclear to me why you are able to build one of the apps, but not the other.

Also, those values were chosen, not arbitrarily assigned. You might make this request to people frequently, but unless its a newer app that is already pegged to the latest targetApi, I believe its an unreasonable request.

I can update these and call it v0.7.0, but reworking this app wasn't on my schedule.
I'd really appreciate it if F-Droid was able to deliver this patch (v0.6.2) in the meantime.

[linsui]

No problem, we can still install jdk 11 from oldoldstable. But I hope that we don't need to rely on a very old and unmaintained channel and I'm not sure if it will work in the future. So I would prefer to get the toolchain updated.

[forrestguice]

Thanks. ❤️
I really appreciate that.

I completely understand the desire to get apps moved over to newer infrastructure. Meanwhile I'm sitting on quite a few "legacy" apps with older builds. I will work towards updating these, but I really do hope that dropping support for building older apps isn't something that's actually on the roadmap.

[forrestguice]

It seems we have 6 months before it suddenly becomes an issue. :(

If I understand correctly, Trixie (stable) offers jdk21, Bookworm (oldstable) offers jdk17, and Bullseye (oldoldstable) offers jdk11. According to https://www.debian.org/releases/ Forky will obsolete Bullseye in August, and Bookworm becomes the new oldoldstable. I'm guessing that means jdk11 will no longer be available through any official channels.

That's distressing since dependencies are so entangled. To support building with jdk21 we need to update Gradle to 8.5+. That requires updating the AGP version to match (e.g. jdk21 with Gradle 8.6 with AGP 8.4). That in turn dictates the build tools and compileSdk? AGP 8.4 requires api34.

Suntimes currently targets api28. It's dependencies are listed under "Older Versions"; https://developer.android.com/build/releases/about-agp#expandable-1. For these older versions there isn't a choice in Gradle version, they must be updated in lockstep with AGP. I suppose losing jdk11 means that building older versions of AGP will become impossible.

Suntimes can target api30 as soon as tomorrow without losing functionality. That updates AGP from 3.6.0 to 4.1.3, and gradle from 5.6.4 to 6.5. I've mapped out the build to api33, which brings the AGP version to 7.2.2 (using Gradle 7.3.3). I think an update to 7.3.3 may actually resolve the problem since it supports jdk17 (currently in oldstable), but Suntimes isn't ready to target api33 without a bunch of additional work. https://github.com/forrestguice/SuntimesWidget/blob/develop/gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.properties

I've also assumed that I need build configurations that match the target I'm trying to build. Maybe that's not true and I can actually use the latest AGP and Gradle while maintaining the older target. Previous attempts to target api28 while compiling against api30 were rejected by lint though. I might be operating under some false assumptions.

So now I feel like I'm at an impasse. I'm honestly feeling some burnout coming on, and was trying to get Suntimes v0.17.0 tagged, done, out of the way, before it started to languish. Now it seems like I need to produce a v0.18.0 within 6 months that builds against jdk17 or later. Argh!!!

I really appreciate the headsup linsui, and apologies if my earlier replies seemed terse (they were). At times I feel like Android development is a catastrophic mess, and today is one of those days.

[linsui]

Thanks for you detailed explain! But you don't need to bump the target sdk version. It's not related to AGP version. See https://github.com/mira-x/SicMu/tree/v2.4.4 for example. It uses Gradle 8.13 and AGP 8.13.2 but targets to sdk version 28.

[forrestguice]

you don't need to bump the target sdk version

I'm really glad to be mistaken about that!
I'm not sure why I assumed that; maybe its associated with legacy support library.

This past week I've successfully updated the build to agp 7.4.0 (paired with jdk17), so I think crisis averted for now. I shouldn't have any problem bringing it up the latest (after reading through a bunch of release notes).