bug#81211: #81211 31.0.90; Android build fails with current Java compilers

On Wed, 29 Jul 2026 at 13:54, Sean Whitton <[email protected]> wrote:

>
> I think that we need to know that the Android port will compile with a
> version of Java that's supported for the next two years at a bare
> minimum.  Preferably it would be much longer.
>
> Online I found that Java 17 will get security fixes until the end of
> September 2029.  That would be good enough.
>
> However, I don't know whether that means security fixes for everyone
> (that make it into openjdk, for example) or just for paying customers.
>

That's a good question. As far as I know, all the commercial Java offerings
are based on OpenJDK, which is GPL licensed and developed in the open. For
example, OpenJDK 11, which was originally released in 2018, was last
updated in July this year. My interpretation of the situation is that the
deadlines set by the commercial reflect the last update of a certain LTS
JDK version, but I could be wrong. Of course, it is up to the source of the
JDK provider to keep the version up to date—in the case of a GNU/Linux
environment, the distro provider.

Another thing to be pondered is how old Android devices we need to support.
For example, how big would the sacrifice be if we get rid of the
requirement to support old devices that can't be upgraded to support newer
versions than Java 7?

I will need to investigate this anyway, because although I got the Java
version to compile, when I got a chance to test it on an Android device, *it
wouldn't install...* :-(

The Emacs Android build environment, as documented in the src/java/INSTALL,
is also in need of some more robustness, IMO.