Canonical Working To Package GraalVM For Ubuntu Linux

While OpenJDK Java is available via the Ubuntu package archive and the go-to JVM on Ubuntu Linux, Canonical is working to package up Oracle's GraalVM as another option for enhancing the Java stack on Ubuntu.

GraalVM offers much more than just being a simple JVM/JDK and can be used for ahead-of-time compilation with GraalVM Native Image, the Graal JIT compiler, and offering other language runtimes like for JavaScript as well as an LLVM runtime. GraalVM also offers some other nifty features like its Polyglot API for embedding guest language code within Java apps.

Oracle provides generic Linux x86_64 and ARM64 binary packages of GraalVM but to date GraalVM hasn't been found in the Debian/Ubuntu archive and the Debian packages of GraalVM have just been some unofficial packages on GitHub.

It turns out Canonical is working to package GraalVM for Ubuntu Linux. Pushkar Kulkarni of the Java for Ubuntu team at Canonical has been working on packaging GraalVM for Ubuntu Linux. In last week's Ubuntu Foundations team updates he mentioned:

GraalVM

- There’s a change in the plan. We now seek to prototype deb packages for graal, instead of snaps.

- I began with prototyping the creation of Graal builder-images as additional binaries created from Ubuntu’s openjdk-23 package.

This is the first I'm hearing of this plan and wasn't brought up in earlier Ubuntu Foundations team weekly updates.

There was no elaboration on why they ended their Snap-based packaging of GraalVM and decided to pursue Debian packages, but that will make some happy with that choice.

This GraalVM effort for Ubuntu is still a work in progress and given the latest stage of Ubuntu 24.10 now, it's potentially something that will likely be on the table for the Ubuntu 25.04 cycle.