Compact JRE Profiles for Desktop?

[Daniel Zwolenski]

Hey Guys,

I'm new to this list so apologies if any of this is off topic or been
covered before. If so please let me know.

In the JavaFX space there is a recent trend towards using "native
installers" for deploying Java applications - the world is moving away from
browser plugins, and so Applets and JNLP are fading into obscurity.

In the "native installer" approach we create an installer for each target
platform (e.g. MSI on windows, RPM for Linux, etc - and in the future
bundles for the various app stores out there). The installer includes the
developer's app but it also includes a private copy of the JRE. i.e. each
Java app you install will have it's own internal JRE specific to it,
removing security problems and versioning problems that come with a
central, system-wide, shared JRE.

One of the challenges with this approach is the current size of the JRE.
We're looking at around 70MB+. We'd like to cut this down to the minimal
size to make downloading (and uploading) distribution bundles a lot
smaller, quicker and easier.

I'm interested to know people's thoughts on how we can create a stripped
down JRE for desktop deployment of Java. Project Jigsaw was looking good
but it's now too far off. The work you guys are doing on the "compact
profiles" seems exactly like what we need. However given the "embedded"
focus it looks to be primarily focused on Linux environments.

If I wanted to do something like compact profiles for desktop environments
(windows, mac, linux), would I be better off looking at the compact
profiles you guys are working on, or starting with the normal OpenJDK
project and just look at putting in custom build files that produce
stripped down versions of the normal JRE? Is it possible, easy, hard, etc?

Given that you guys have done a lot of work in this space, I'd be very
interested in any and all tips and ideas on strategies to make this happen.

Also, it's worth mentioning that there is a lot of community
interest/pressure around getting JavaFX (and Java in general) running on
Android and iOS devices. A stripped down JRE looks like a necessary
pre-cursor to making that happen too.

Cheers,
Dan