One of the things I do at work is Meta analysis. The biggest collaborative network for this is the Cochrane group, and their software, revman, is a reasonable tool for doing such work. I spend a fair amount of time using this passage and running it is essential for my work.

The trouble is that it is dependant on the Oracle Java version six (not seven) and this can cause all kinds of hassles. This has meant for quite a while my work machines have run Xubuntu… not because I am particularly enamoured with Mark Shuttleworth and his OS, but simply because I can get Revman to run on it.

However, Ubuntu has periods of squirrelness, and I am enough of a control freak to want to run something a tad more advanced. One of my machines therefore runs Arch, woth gnome and cinnamon as the two window environments of choice. My question is… can I install Revman in Arch?.

Well, Arch has good resources, and the wiki page says that the AUR (Arch User resources) has versions available. So if you can roll your own.

Firstly, I downloaded and extracted the two tarballs required from the AUR into my builds folder and downloaded revman.

$ cd builds/jre6-compat/
# makepkg -s --asroot  #this is not recommended. You should makepkgs as a user, but I do not have sudo installed
(omitting a lot of notes the terminal will have as you make the package)
# packman -U jre6-compat-1\:6u45-06-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz #this is the package that was created.
loading packages...
resolving dependencies...
looking for inter-conflicts...

Packages (1): jre6-compat-1:6u45-06

Total Installed Size:   90.61 MiB

:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n] 
(1/1) checking keys in keyring                     [######################] 100%
(1/1) checking package integrity                   [######################] 100%
(1/1) loading package files                        [######################] 100%
(1/1) checking for file conflicts                  [######################] 100%
(1/1) checking available disk space                [######################] 100%
For any doubt read carefully here:
I want to make you aware that this is (probably) last version
of the package as Oracle declared that it stopped releasing JDK/JRE 6 pubblic updates.
They'll be avaible just for companies which are paying Oracle for Java 6.
And because of the fact I don't pay Oracle and so I cannot have the access to
their updated Java 6 ('cause as I said is just for companies)
I won't release up-to-date packages as I don't want to get in trouble.
AUR jre6/jdk6 packages includes only-companies JRE6.
If you want, you can just make a few edits to this PKGBUILD
and link it to companies-only JRE6; it's really easy.
I just simply won't do it.
You can do it, it's up to you.
And don't flag this as outdated, as it is up to date considering pubblic release.
Sorry for repetitions, the long message and not-so-good English.
Cheers!
(1/1) installing jre6-compat                       [######################] 100%
The jre package is licensed software.
You MUST read and agree to the license stored in
/opt/java/jre/LICENSE before using it.
Please relogin to include jre in your PATH.

Next...
$ cd ..
$ cd jdk6-compat/
# makepkg -s --asroot
(again, not recommended if you have sudo -- both of these pkgbuilds install dependencies)
(again, omitting the build process).
]# pacman -U jdk6-compat-1\:6u45-06-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz 
loading packages...
resolving dependencies...
looking for inter-conflicts...

Packages (1): jdk6-compat-1:6u45-06

Total Installed Size:   104.24 MiB

:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n] 
(1/1) checking keys in keyring                     [######################] 100%
(1/1) checking package integrity                   [######################] 100%
(1/1) loading package files                        [######################] 100%
(1/1) checking for file conflicts                  [######################] 100%
(1/1) checking available disk space                [######################] 100%
For any doubt read carefully here:
I want to make you aware that this is (probably) last version
of the package as Oracle declared that it stopped releasing JDK/JRE 6 pubblic updates.
They'll be avaible just for companies which are paying Oracle for Java 6.
And because of the fact I don't pay Oracle and so I cannot have the access to
their updated Java 6 ('cause as I said is just for companies)
I won't release up-to-date packages as I don't want to get in trouble.
AUR jre6/jdk6 packages includes only-companies JRE6.
If you want, you can just make a few edits to this PKGBUILD
and link it to companies-only JRE6; it's really easy.
I just simply won't do it.
You can do it, it's up to you.
And don't flag this as outdated, as it is up to date considering pubblic release.
Sorry for repetitions, the long message and not-so-good English.
Cheers!
(1/1) installing jdk6-compat                       [######################] 100%
The jdk package is licensed software.
You MUST read and agree to the license stored in
/opt/java/LICENSE before using it.
Please relogin to include jdk in your PATH

(now, go to where revman is stored)
(you should do this as ROOT if you want revman to be able to update itself, which you do want to happen)

sh RevMan_5_2_unix_java6.sh 
testing JVM in /usr ...
testing JVM in /opt/java6 ...
Starting Installer ...

and you are into the graphical install. It works, as shown with the screenshot.