mjhjmtu

I'm trying to package an RPM that requires any Java version above Java 8.
The RPM works fine if there's no Java installed, or if JRE/JDK for 8 is installed.
HOWEVER if I install OpenJDK 11, when I install my RPM it will try to install Java 8 again.

How do I get my RPM to detect that there's already a Java 11 installation which should be compatible with my package?
I don't want my package to install Java 8 if I have Java 11 already!

I'm running Red Hat 7.5, but this also reproduces in CentOS7.
I was able to reproduce this with a simple hello world package:

Name: hello-world
Version: 1
Release: 1
Summary: Most simple RPM package
License: FIXME
Requires: jre-headless >= 1.8

%description
%prep
%build
cat > hello-world.sh <<EOF
#!/usr/bin/bash
echo Hello world
EOF

%install
mkdir -p %buildroot/usr/bin/
install -m 755 hello-world.sh %buildroot/usr/bin/hello-world.sh

%files
/usr/bin/hello-world.sh

%changelog

Build with:

rpmdev-setuptree
rpmbuild -ba hello-world.spec

Then install OpenJDK11: sudo yum -y install java-11-openjdk

Finally test my package: rpm -i --test <FILE>.rpm gives:

error: Failed dependencies:
 jre-headless >= 1.8 is needed by hello-world-1-1.x86_64

sudo yum localinstall <FILE>.rpm also tries to install Java8.

sudo yum deplist <FILE>.rpm suggests that java-11-openjdk should provide what I need:

Loaded plugins: fastestmirror
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
 * base: ftp.heanet.ie
 * extras: ftp.heanet.ie
 * updates: ftp.heanet.ie
package: hello-world.x86_64 1-1
 dependency: /usr/bin/bash
 provider: bash.x86_64 4.2.46-31.el7
 dependency: jre-headless >= 1.8
 provider: java-11-openjdk-headless.x86_64 1:11.0.ea.28-7.el7
 provider: java-11-openjdk-headless.i686 1:11.0.ea.28-7.el7
 provider: java-1.8.0-openjdk-headless.x86_64 1:1.8.0.201.b09-2.el7_6
 provider: java-1.8.0-openjdk-headless.i686 1:1.8.0.191.b12-1.el7_6
 provider: java-1.7.0-openjdk-headless.x86_64 1:1.7.0.211-2.6.17.1.el7_6

(Not sure why Java 7 is a provider of Java 8 either).

I tried setting requires to jre or java but no luck. Also I tried pre-installing java-11-openjdk-headless specifically, but it made no difference.

It seems like boolean dependencies might fix this, but sadly I can't guarantee my end-users have a recent enough version of rpm installed.

I'm not sure what I could be doing wrong?

How do I set a RPM package to require Java 8 or higher, whose dependencies are satisfied by Java 11?

For now, the OpenJDK 11 packages in RHEL 7 and 8 don’t provide java-headless, jre-headless, or any of the unversioned Java packages. (As I understand it, the reason is that OpenJDK 11 isn’t guaranteed to be a replacement for OpenJDK 8 maintaining compatibility in all cases.) This will change when OpenJDK 11 becomes the system JDK; you can try tracking this bug to be notified of changes.

Unfortunately I don’t think there is a way currently to allow an RPM package to depend on jre-headless and be installable with OpenJDK 11 only, without using boolean dependencies (and RHEL 8, effectively). A typical workaround would be to use a file requirement instead of a package requirement, but java-8-openjdk-headless and java-11-openjdk-headless don’t provide a common file which you can depend upon (and I don’t think file requirements can be versioned).

Your query suggests that jre-headless is satisfied by the OpenJDK 11 packages, but that’s because the early-access packages erroneously provided the default packages; so

yum whatprovides jre-headless

lists OpenJDK 8 and OpenJDK 11 packages, but the latter are no longer installable.