Add WPLib to official Linux package repositories

[vramaiah]

Could we add WPiLib to Linux package repositories like aptitude for debian distros and pacman or the AUR for Arch Linux distributions?

Why?

This would allow Linux users to install and update WPLib using standard Linux package managers, simplifying the process of installation and maintenance. Installation could be as easy as running sudo apt install wpilib or sudo pacman -S wpilib

I would be willing to help assist with this, although I do not have any prior experience maintaining packages on Linux.

[calcmogul]

We only want to maintain one official way to install the WPILib suite. The all-in-one installer was the easiest to support, it facilitates installing more than one year at once (each year is a separate folder in ~/wpilib), and it can be installed by users who don't have root privileges.

We used to provide PPAs for the toolchain, but it was too much work to keep up to date because apt packaging is obnoxious. I maintain an AUR package for the toolchain.

• https://launchpad.net/~wpilib/+archive/ubuntu/toolchain
• https://launchpad.net/~wpilib/+archive/ubuntu/toolchain-beta
• https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/frc-toolchain

Linux packages for the whole suite are blocked on finishing CLI support for the installer.

[vramaiah]

The logs are gone, so I can't see why the CI failed either. How can I rerun CI?

[calcmogul]

https://github.com/wpilibsuite/WPILibInstaller-Avalonia/pull/464/files has some of the error messages. If you want to see more, you'll have to push their branch to your own installer fork.

[vramaiah]

For some reason, when I build I get this:

Downloading https://services.gradle.org/distributions/gradle-8.11-bin.zip
.............10%.............20%.............30%.............40%.............50%.............60%.............70%.............80%.............90%.............100%
WARNING: A restricted method in java.lang.System has been called
WARNING: java.lang.System::load has been called by net.rubygrapefruit.platform.internal.NativeLibraryLoader in an unnamed module (file:/Users/[CENSORED]/.gradle/wrapper/dists/gradle-8.11-bin/c4te04g51qsyw1bxcb929u7br/gradle-8.11/lib/native-platform-0.22-milestone-26.jar)
WARNING: Use --enable-native-access=ALL-UNNAMED to avoid a warning for callers in this module
WARNING: Restricted methods will be blocked in a future release unless native access is enabled


Welcome to Gradle 8.11!

Here are the highlights of this release:
 - Parallel load and store for Configuration Cache
 - Java compilation errors at the end of the build output
 - Consolidated report for warnings and deprecations

For more details see https://docs.gradle.org/8.11/release-notes.html

Starting a Gradle Daemon (subsequent builds will be faster)

FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.

* What went wrong:
BUG! exception in phase 'semantic analysis' in source unit '_BuildScript_' Unsupported class file major version 68
> Unsupported class file major version 68

* Try:
> Run with --stacktrace option to get the stack trace.
> Run with --info or --debug option to get more log output.
> Run with --scan to get full insights.
> Get more help at https://help.gradle.org.```

[ThadHouse]

You have too new of a JDK. Java 21 is likely the newest version supported by the installer build, but we still build with Java 17 iirc.

[vramaiah]

I created a pull request: wpilibsuite/WPILibInstaller-Avalonia#552. I have not tested it yet though, and I am new to open source, so let me know any ways I can improve.