Deployment: Bundling the official Sun java JRE installers?

Newbie & Debugging Questions
#1

Hi there,

I’m new to this forum and have a question about distribution and deployment of Java games, offline(!).

As far as I understand, it seems to be a problem to provide any installer that comes bundled with an official Sun java JRE installer. Is that right?

Are we (or are we not) allowed to include such an JRE installer with any kind of installation routine? I’m talking about Freeware and/or OpenSource-licensed games.

I do not mean creation of some fat or wrapped jar including any runtimes. I think of simply putting the offical JRE installer into an (e.g. selfUnzip-distributed) installation directory and calling it from my (non-Sun) installer routine (before or after) game binaries installation…

Besides Webstart, how do you solve that problem?

Thanks in advance!

Brgds,
Michael

#2

IIRC, you’re allowed to include the unmodified JRE installer with your own installer, the thing you’re not allowed to do is distribute a modified JRE (eg. a minimal, stripped down version to reduce file size). If you’re ok with the additional download size then you should be fine.

#3

Ah ok, thank you.

#4

Actually… the preferred method is to install it as a private JRE.

The JDK comes with two JREs. One which is public (the one in the programs folder), which relies on registry settings and stuff, and a private one in the “jre” sub dir of the JDK installation.

The latter one is the one you should install along with your application.

If you want to keep the overhead as low as possible, use pack200 compression for all jar files. The unpack200 utility is in the “bin” directory and can be invoked from your installer. Note that you should NOT use gzip compression on the pack files (–no-gzip), since the compression scheme of your installer (eg LZMA if you’re using NSIS) usually yields better results.