WHY JRE?

[davepowell]

Hi,
Check the archives, and did not find an answer to my question. If this has been asked/answered before, please send me to the solution.
I want to write a java program, and open it from Win XXX with the (double)click of an icon. Can this be done without the JRE?
Can JRE be bundled with the executable so an end user does not have to download/install JRE?
Sorry this is so vague, am just starting Java, and do not yet have the tools to formulate a very technical question.
Thanks, Dave

[Jim Yingst]

You can distrubute the JRE with the application - the user would still have to install it, but you can save them the trouble of downloading it from Sun if you like. It amy be possible to somehow repackage this so it looks like a single application - but it seems like a bad idea. What if the user has several applications which use Java? Why should they need a separate JRE for each one, embedded inside some other application? Keeping the JRE as a separate component allows it to be used for other things as well.

[John Dale]

Sharing is good. But it can cause problems because of changes in APIs between major releases (e.g., 1.2 to 1.3). It is my understanding that you not should see such changes within a level unless it is a bug or a bug fix.
Some of the install tools can handle finding and/or installing the Java runtime without involving the user, so to the user it does look like "normal" application, with a pretty little icon the start menu, etc. But when I last played with one, at least one release back, I didn't see an easy way to get it to deal with the Java runtime sharing issue in a way to my liking. However, I imagine things have improved since then.