Revert Flink 1.18 support

[Abacn]

Revert #31062 and #31217 (partially), reason - breaks PostRelease test suite.

Tested that revert these two PR, Failed Flink validation task in PostRelease back green

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[Abacn]

./gradlew :runners:flink:1.17:runQuickstartJavaFlinkLocal now also failing: https://github.com/apache/beam/actions/runs/9068053305/job/24914468708

[Abacn]

Running a Nightly Snapshot on this branch: https://github.com/apache/beam/actions/runs/9068716106

then will run a PostRelease test to see if revert two PRs will fix PostRelease test

Update: PostRelease test using modified Nightly Snapshot (reverted #31062) passed: https://github.com/apache/beam/actions/runs/9069100546/job/24917900959

[Abacn]

I have cleaned up this test PR and ready for review

[github-actions]

Checks are failing. Will not request review until checks are succeeding. If you'd like to override that behavior, comment assign set of reviewers

[shunping]

LGTM once all testing is passed.

[shunping]

Also adding @thebozzcl and @je-ik for awareness.

[shunping]

Run Python_Coverage PreCommit

[github-actions]

Test Results

0 files   -    10  0 suites   - 10   0s ⏱️ - 23m 15s
0 tests  - 7 539  0 ✅  - 6 641  0 💤  -   898  0 ❌ ±0 
0 runs   - 7 737  0 ✅  - 6 670  0 💤  - 1 067  0 ❌ ±0 

Results for commit 0542c83. ± Comparison against base commit c230655.

[je-ik]

LGTM, though as you mentioned, this probably will not resolve the issue, but at least we can be sure.

[Abacn]

This exposes a separate issue that Flink 1.18 class (presumably the highest supported one) is used when running the Flink 1.17 QuickStart test. This makes the test now failing in both 1.18 and 1.17 version and confused us

[Abacn]

The test entry is here: https://github.com/apache/beam/blob/master/release/src/main/groovy/quickstart-java-flinklocal.groovy

One can see the invocation only has "--runner=FlinkRunner -Pflink-runner" parameter. The first tells beam to use Flink runner, the second tells maven to activate flink related java dependencies, which pinned to "project.ext.latestFlinkVersion":

beam/sdks/java/maven-archetypes/examples/build.gradle

Line 50 in c1d1bd6

'flink.artifact.name': 'beam-runners-flink-'.concat(project(":runners:flink:${project.ext.latestFlinkVersion}").getName()),

[Abacn]

Two possible way to fix

• Move createJavaExamplesArchetypeValidationTask from flink_runner.gradle to runners/flink/build.gradle, so a single validation task run on latest supported flink

• make createJavaExamplesArchetypeValidationTask aware of flink version, pass it down to maven-archetype project, and set version there

[je-ik]

The check passes on current master. After reverting this PR the test for Flink 1.18 pass locally. I'm not familiar with the mechanics how the test is executed, though. It uses maven, but I'm unable to get the pom.xml used to execute the test to compare it for differences with 1.17. Any clues anyone?

[je-ik]

#31328