Deploying Application with JVM

Question

Hi,

Our customer wants us to ship his application with an embedded JVM. We tried to convince him otherwise but had no luck.

Now, here is the way we are contemplating taking. We want to take the Apache Harmony VM and libraries. We would then strip everything we don't need and ship the application with the bare minimum in terms of libraries.

My questions are thus:

1) Where can I find detailled explanations about the functionality provided by the different libraries (natives and classes) coming with a JVM?

2) How can i know if a JVM library file is needed or not?

I know the questions are a bit convoluted, but i hope somebody out there have done something similar.

Regards, Gregoire.

Answer 1

It looks like you can also distribute the Sun JDK if you do not modify anything (I would consult a lawyer to be sure).

Whichever way you go I would not prune anything, that would make it more complicated if and when you needed to upgrade the client's software.

Answer 2

The problem is not the license of Sun/Oracle, they allow redistribution of the Java Runtime Environment, so developers can embed it into their application installation packages.

However, the problem is export regulations. By law, you may not export parts of the JRE to certain countries, so you would have to check whether your customers are in the allowed list of countries before they can download your application package which includes the JRE. This for example applies to such things as the Java Cryptography.