JDK-6193607 : Download-on-the-fly JRE
  • Type: Enhancement
  • Component: install
  • Sub-Component: install
  • Affected Version: 5.0
  • Priority: P4
  • Status: Closed
  • Resolution: Duplicate
  • OS: windows_xp
  • CPU: x86
  • Submitted: 2004-11-10
  • Updated: 2010-04-02
  • Resolved: 2004-11-11
Related Reports
Duplicate :  
Description
A DESCRIPTION OF THE REQUEST :
This topic is discussed here: http://forums.java.net/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=90&tstart=75

The JRE should ship with Java Webstart and the minimal support DLLs, classes that it requires. The download size must be under 2MB.

When the user tries running any application that is missing classes, the JRE checks against a table of known classes and retrieves and installs the classes on-demand. That is, the JRE grows on the fly. For efficiency's sake, you would want to download the entire class package anytime a single class is requested.

A side-effect of this technology is that users will always have the latest JRE installed because downloading it won't be a big deal anymore (2MB versus 7-13MB). This will benefit *millions* of  developers in a big way!

JUSTIFICATION :
It is currently impossible for companies to target dial-up users if their product relies on Java. The majority of the world's users still use dial-up and they will *not* download anything over 2MB. For businesses like my own, this is a life or death situation. Since this is a JRE issue, *only* Sun can fix it. I cannot implement a workaround on my own because of the legal issues.

The download-on-the-fly JRE gives dial-up users the impression that they only need to download 3MB for any Java application, not 7-13MB as is the current case. Most desktop applications use a conservative amount of classes from the core JAR; they truely do not need them all.

If Java is ever to enter the desktop domain, this technology is absolutely *required*.
###@###.### 2004-11-10 21:53:55 GMT