Status of arm32 support in Temurin

[MDoswaldSchiller]

What is the current status of Temurin releases for the arm32 Linux platform?

According to the March 2023 Release Status (adoptium/adoptium#218) issue, the binaries for the arm32 Linux platform could not be built for Temurin 20 due to a problem with the TCK test. It was noted, that it will be released at a later date, if this changes.

For the Temurin 20.0.x releases, the arm32 Linux platform binaries were then marked as 'not planned' in the Release Status issues (adoptium/adoptium#224, adoptium/adoptium#239).

For Temurin 21, the arm32 Linux binaries were then again marked as planned in the Release Status issue (adoptium/temurin#8) but only the "jdk21 AQA" task was finished. The subsequent tasks are still marked as 'actively working on' and 'not yet started' respectively. My question about the state of the arm32 Linux platform in this issues remained unanswered.
For the Temurin 21.0.1 build, the arm32 Linux binaries were then again marked as 'not planned' (adoptium/temurin#6)

The official "Supported Platforms" (https://adoptium.net/en-GB/supported-platforms/) page does not list arm32 Linux as a supported platform for Temurin 21. Does that mean that the support for arm32 Linux is now cancelled for future versions of Temurin and I need to switch to a different OpenJDK build that still supports that platform? Or do you expect to reintroduce support for arm32 Linux in the future?

[sxa]

This is still in discussion. As far as I know no other provider of java compliant openjdk runtimes have shipped a JDK21 (If you know of one, please let us know). It is also unclear at present how much support is being provided for this platform at the upstream openjdk project, which we depend on, for JDK21+.

For now we are still producing nightly builds, and there should be early access builds available for arm32 at https://adoptium.net/blog/2023/08/early-access-builds/

Out of interest is this for use on a 32-bit Raspbian distribution or something else?

[MDoswaldSchiller]

As far as I know no other provider of java compliant openjdk runtimes have shipped a JDK21

Bellsoft offers their Liberica JDK 21 (https://bell-sw.com/pages/downloads/#jdk-21-lts), which supports arm32. According to their website, their JDKs are verified by TCK, so I guess it is a compliant build.

Out of interest is this for use on a 32-bit Raspbian distribution or something else?

We use Java on custom i.MX6 based devices in the medical space. As operating system we use a custom Linux (built with the yocto framework). Medical devices are produced over a long period of time, so I expect that we will still produce devices with arm32 processors for some time to come. Even if newer device models will have arm64 CPUs, the arm32 ones are still produced or in the field and need updates. So losing the possibility to update the JRE on these devices would be a shame.

[sxa]

Bellsoft offers their Liberica JDK 21 (https://bell-sw.com/pages/downloads/#jdk-21-lts), which supports arm32. According to their website, their JDKs are verified by TCK, so I guess it is a compliant build.

Thank you - that's useful information - I hadn't spotted that Bellsoft had published one.

We use Java on custom i.MX6 based devices in the medical space.
So losing the possibility to update the JRE on these devices would be a shame.

Bear in mind that we do not plan to stop updating earlier versions of Temurin so you will still be able to get patches to the previous versions from us regardless of whether we ship a JDK21.

[andrew-m-leonard]

Following on from PMC discussion, arm32Linux will not be provided for Temurin jdk21+ releases.

[gounthar]

That's very sad, as arm32 machines make good Jenkins agents. 🤷

[sxa]

@MDoswaldSchiller Just having a think around this - does your use case require a GUI? (Same question to @bbernhard ref adoptium/containers#502 (comment))

[MDoswaldSchiller]

@sxa Yes, my use case requires a GUI. We are using JavaFX for that, which we compile ourselves and generate a JRE using jlink which includes the JavaFX modules.

[bbernhard]

Many thanks for picking this issue up again!

My use case doesn't require a GUI :)

[gounthar]

Neither does mine. 🤷

[theofficialgman]

hoping this decision gets reversed

[karianna]

See adoptium/adoptium.net#3104