On Sat, 5 Aug 2023 at 17:51, Roberto C. Sánchez <
roberto@debian.org> wrote:
>
> On Sat, Aug 05, 2023 at 05:21:55PM +0100, Mark Fletcher wrote:
> > Gradle is not some minority, hardly-used tool, so there is presumably
> > a reason why the package hasn't been updated in Debian. Anyone know
> > what it is?
> >
> Becuase it's Very Hard Work(TM).
>
> Updating Gradle in Debian was proposed as a project under Freexian's
> Project Funding initiative and it was accepted and work was done on it
> for several months:
>
https://salsa.debian.org/freexian-team/project-funding/-/issues/19
>
Thanks, that makes interesting reading. On the surface, it's clearly _not_ a
major technical challenge to install considering how easy it is to install manually.
After my original post I discovered that IntelliJ has been installing successive
versions of it on my machine and the latest version installed Gradle 8.2 which
is the latest. So I will just use that going forward, and upgrade when I update IntelliJ.
Looks like the issue for _packaging_ Gradle is some of its dependencies. That
effort you provided a link to is / was about getting rid of some proprietary enterprise
plugin, and seems to have uncovered a dependency chain via Kotlin that slightly
bizarrely leads to a dependency on OpenJDK 8... Really? In 2023? If I am reading
the discussion right it looks like the version of Kotlin we have in Debian depends
on OpenJDK 8 and no one is stepping forward to update that. They are making
rumbling noises about dropping gradle from Debian. I like gradle and will likely
continue using it -- but since I can get it onto my machine with zero effort via
Intellij I don't seek to insist that Debian package it (and installing it manually is
easy if I had to... which I don't). So I guess the way out of this current situation
is either for gradle to be dropped from Debian or Kotlin to get an upgrade. I'd lean
towards drop it except that there is an acknowledgement that Kotlin isn't going
away and will need an upgrade at some point anyway...
Anyway, thanks, I understand the situation a little better now -- and also I have
a path forward for my own work, so I am happy now.