[External] : Re: Disallowing the dynamic loading of agents by default

[Mike Hearn]

Why, well, you get more features, it's easier for the end user, and
not any harder for the developer. Those are pretty concrete reasons
why people would want to do it that way. I'd suggest trying Conveyor
out yourself before worrying about rigging or customization, because
straightforward Java apps don't actually need any configuration beyond
specifying the URL of the update site. It's easier than Web Start was,
and takes no more lines of code than configuring Gradle to make fat
JARs does. It's free for open source projects so I'd say please just
try it out with an open mind. If you still find it harder than
publishing JARs then I'd be very interested to read an essay or blog
post drilling into the differences. Maybe try following the JavaFX
tutorial here:

https://conveyor.hydraulic.dev/7.2/tutorial/hare/jvm/

Without that kind of concrete detail though, I'm going to feel like
this is about perspectives. If you view Java as a capital-p Platform,
competing on the same level as an operating system, then JARs feel
natural and bundling would feel like a retreat from the glory days. If
you perceive it as a large and fancy library then it's just like any
other library and asking the user to manage it separately makes no
more sense than expecting users to manage the Visual C++ runtime. The
switch to jlinking and bundling in this case is all win, it removes
headaches instead of adding them.