Does referencing the JDK namespaces from within a .NET application require the Java runtime to be installed?

Question

I'm in a VB.NET application. I have referenced some java.* namespaces in my file and am utilizing objects and methods from this namespace throughout the code. Presumably this is relying upon J# to compile.

Imports java.util
Imports java.util.zip
Imports java.io

Are these JDK namespaces fully contained in the .NET framework, or will my clients need to have Java installed when they go to run my application?

As a side note, I have not explicity referenced any external Java DLL's or anything. This is all pure .NET as far as my code is concerned.

Answer 1

Yes, they're within the J# DLLs, which I strongly suspect VB is referencing for you automatically. If you open your binaries up in Reflector, I'm sure you'll see a reference to vjslib.dll there.

There's no dependency on an actual JRE/JDK being installed.

Personally I would try to migrate away from them, however. If you need more compression options than System.IO.Compression it's worth looking at SharpZipLib. Microsoft no longer ships J# as a product, and the idea of trying to port all the Java 1.1.4 classes to .NET, including their quirks, has always made me nervous.

vjslib.dll doesn't even ship by default with either the framework or Visual Studio these days...