I run a mac and understand i need jdk to run Base.
I recently downloaded jdk, but as it’s for developers, and i’m not a developer, it didn’t do the ‘install magic’ that software designed for plebs does.
That is, i ended up with a jdk folder in my downloads folder.
That contains another folder called Contents.
What do i do with the jdk folder?
Your problem probably got nothing to do with but as it’s for developers but with the fact that you did not download a .dmg file. Take @Hrbrgr 's resource at Oracle and download the .dmg file for macOS (for privat, non-commercial use only). As there are many different implementation and packings for Java (Traditional from java.vom, Oracle OTN, OpenJDK, AdoptOpenJDK, Amazon Coretto, …) out there, there are more than one installlation methods (all issues related to Oracles new ideas regarding the future of Java).
So - if you need help - you need to tell us, from where and which JDK you have downloaded and you want to install now.
Thanks both for your answers. Using the dmg file seems to have fixed part of the problem.
I previously downloaded jdk from this page: http://jdk.java.net (the Ready for Use version), then chose the mac version. That downloaded a tar.gz file, which gave me the jdk folder i mentioned.
Instead i went to the downloads area you both suggested, and chose the dmg version. On opening it i was greeted with an installation guide, which i followed, and was told the installation was successful.
However then i tried to open a table i’d created a week or two ago, and got the message, “The connection to the external data source could not be established. No SDBC driver was found for the URL ‘sdbc:embedded:hsqldb’.”
Is this a related problem or another problem?
Please check LibreOffice -> Preferences -> LibreOffice -> Advanced -> Category: Java Options whether there is a JRE available and “Location” shows the path to your JDK just installed? If yes - you face another problem. If there are more than on JRE available, select one. And may be you need tick “Use a Java runtime environment” option first. Next thing might be bitness - if you have a 64-bit macOS you also need the 64-bit JDK.
FWIW, downloading the Oracle/OpenJDK zip archive, extracting and copying the extracted folder to your macOS system JavaVirtualMachines folder should work, but you need administrator privileges on the macOS machine in order to do this…