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The java version is ... problematic. The current version of the base game will work with any Java version. So will some of the very old game versions that do not use launchwrapper.

Java 8 is required for all legacy versions, and all modded versions of the game (except for some experimental builds of Forge for 1.13). It makes sense to require it, because easily, 99% of the various ways to play the game DO require it. Roughly half of the players play modded regularly.

Fixing the old and modded versions is a non-trivial (almost intractable) task. Fixing Java would require forking it and maintaining the fork. Java runtimes of different versions are installable side-by-side. The launcher needing 'a java 8 runtime' should not prevent you from installing and using a different one.

If you have any suggestions about how to improve this situation, I'm all ears. However, using Java 9+ by default would introduce major issues.

If it helps:

diff --git a/PKGBUILD b/PKGBUILD
index 97aa16a..5a80df1 100644
--- a/PKGBUILD
+++ b/PKGBUILD
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 # Maintainer: Petr Mrázek <petr@mojang.com>
 pkgname=minecraft-launcher
-pkgver=2.1.2472
+pkgver=2.1.2482
 pkgrel=1
 pkgdesc="Official Minecraft Launcher"
 arch=('x86_64')
@@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ minecraft-launcher.desktop
 minecraft-launcher.svg
 )
 sha256sums=(
-'ceab99e810b6e0bdf784d8600e5e01b6730af6103df7a23a406501c2b3bb5741'
+'1a50aa83ab45ad69795e2ea5209cfd8092b5be4592731c4442c5e642279d0f00'
 '677e2442a1ae83cc58d8d403666e508129e97dbed37fdfafdceac6101dc0dee7'
 '35c2bcaeb09fa4b8864e9422fd66bf60847706f8b4400ec4a66ba6436b101f71'
 )

The future plan for this is to turn the main package into a downloader/updater and bring it in line with the other platforms. Please switch to using minecraft-launcher.

I tried manually building the package by changing the pkgver in the PKGBUILD file and it installed but it would only open when run as root.

ERROR: One or more files did not pass validity checks

@jpegxguy that's answered in the pinned message. JRE 1.8 (java-runtime=8) is required for anything using legacy launcher (aka launch wrapper), which is almost all mods and also legacy versions of the game.

Newer JRE versions break stuff that legacy launcher depends on (ABIs).

He did note that there is nothing to stop you having JRE 1.8 in addition to other java versions since they do not conflict.

@petr Why not java-runtime>=8 ?

Any reason installing it into opt? Also the launcher doesn't scales on highdpi.

The java version is ... problematic. The current version of the base game will work with any Java version. So will some of the very old game versions that do not use launchwrapper.

Java 8 is required for all legacy versions, and all modded versions of the game (except for some experimental builds of Forge for 1.13). It makes sense to require it, because easily, 99% of the various ways to play the game DO require it. Roughly half of the players play modded regularly.

Fixing the old and modded versions is a non-trivial (almost intractable) task. Fixing Java would require forking it and maintaining the fork. Java runtimes of different versions are installable side-by-side. The launcher needing 'a java 8 runtime' should not prevent you from installing and using a different one.

If you have any suggestions about how to improve this situation, I'm all ears. However, using Java 9+ by default would introduce major issues.

@TheAifam5 "Some form of Java runtime 8 is a dependency and will remain so until the issues caused by ABI breaks in later versions are resolved in one way or another."

@petr Please, don't force to use specific version of Java. I'm actually thinking to create a fork of this package, to support newer Java version.