Compact JRE Profiles for Desktop?

[David Holmes]

Hi Daniel,

It isn't really on-topic for this list but I'll try to answer in part 
anyway.

The Compact Profiles work is part of SE 8 and will be defined for any 
platform. However that doesn't mean that the OpenJDK sources will 
necessarily be set up to build profiles for all platforms. At present 
the Profiles work (in the jdk8/profiles forest) is Linux-only.

IANAL but a key part of the Profiles work is updating the SE 
specification to define Compact Profiles as allowable subsets of the 
platform. If you customize things yourself there may be limits on how 
you can share that with others.

I must say that a JRE per app makes me cringe. Didn't we try that kind 
of deployment model (not for Java of course :) ) back in the 80's  (DLL 
Hell) ?

David Holmes

On 13/11/2012 8:19 AM, Daniel Zwolenski wrote:
> 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