Distributing applications without installing JRE

Thread view:

Fredrik Andreas Dahl - 02 Sep 2003 15:58 GMT

I would like to distribute my Swing based application without forcing the
user to install the JRE,
because the JRE may replace the user's current VM as default, which might
have unwanted side effects.
Is it possible to distribute a .jar application, say, on a CD, including a
JRE for its own use,
without actually installing the JRE on the pc?

I appologize if this question is silly, overy paranoid, or if this is not
the right news group for it!

Fredrik

Reply to this Message

Michael Klaus - 02 Sep 2003 17:09 GMT

> Is it possible to distribute a .jar application, say, on a CD, including a
> JRE for its own use,

You might want to have a look the the JAVA_HOME environment variable ;o)
Generally, if you got pre-installed JREs on your CD, there shouldn't be a
problem to provide the necessairy shell-scripts to get your program work.
Not sure if this is allowed by the JRE-license tho.

Reply to this Message

Wee Jin Goh - 02 Sep 2003 17:15 GMT

> I would like to distribute my Swing based application without forcing the
> user to install the JRE,
[quoted text clipped - 8 lines]
>
> Fredrik

Install anywhere by Zero G allows you to create an installer that also
installs the JRE, but in the application directory. That way, it doesn't
affect the user's installed JVM in anyway. Only downsize is you add the
size of the JRE to your distributable.

Regards,
Wee Jin

Reply to this Message

Fredrik Andreas Dahl - 02 Sep 2003 20:04 GMT

> > I would like to distribute my Swing based application without forcing the
> > user to install the JRE,
[quoted text clipped - 16 lines]
> Regards,
> Wee Jin

Thanks! Zero-G's installer looks promising!

All the best
Fredrik

Reply to this Message

Chris Smith - 04 Sep 2003 14:27 GMT

> I would like to distribute my Swing based application without forcing the
> user to install the JRE,
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
> JRE for its own use,
> without actually installing the JRE on the pc?

Yep, we do that with Design-a-Course... we extract the files from an
installed JRE into a subdirectory of our application, and run the app
explicitly from the VM executable image of this installed JRE. The
JAVA_HOME variable (mentioned by another poster) is not needed; that's
actually nothing but a convenient way to tell third-party applications
like Tomcat or such where you've installed Java, and is not needed by
the JRE itself. As long as you use an executable file from your own JRE
directory and keep the directory structure intact, it should work.

Signature

www.designacourse.com
The Easiest Way to Train Anyone... Anywhere.

Chris Smith - Lead Software Developer/Technical Trainer
MindIQ Corporation

Reply to this Message

Distributing applications without installing JRE

Free Magazines