Running java without installing jre?

Question

As asked and answered here, python has a useful way of deployment without installers. Can Java do the same thing?

• Is there any way to run Java's jar file without installing jre?
• Is there a tool something like java2exe (win32), java2bin (linux) or java2app (mac)?

Answer 1

You might be able to get some luck with GCJ - haven't tried it myself.

Answer 2

you can embbed the JRE inside your application and create a setup or installation for your application.

Answer 3

You can use Launch4j for this. Well documented and easy to use. While the resulting program still needs a JRE to run, you don't have to install the JRE on the target system. You can just copy it with your application and tell Launch4j were to find it or just wrap it up with everything else.

Answer 4

You can have a look at

http://www.bearcave.com/software/java/comp_java.html

You might get it what you want.

Answer 5

You might want to check out how Eclipse does it - it has a native .exe that can use a local (to the installation) JRE.

Answer 6

For creating native executables, you can use Excelsion Jet, which compiles Java to native code. We used it for a project at work, and we had to perform zero modification to the original source code (which targetted Sun's JDK).