G'day,
Miguel wrote:
Q: It would be helpful for me to find some examples ... Are you aware of any open-source Java applications that work this way?
Not open source. However, Sun's Java3D <http://java.sun.com/products/java-media/3D/>, JavaServlet <http://java.sun.com/products/servlet/index.jsp> and JavaManagement <http://java.sun.com/products/servlet/index.jsp> can be installed as standard extensions (actually, they're now called "optional packages").
Q: Do you have any recommendations as to where I should start looking for information about installers?
I'm afraid not.
It is worth noting that the JRE will download and install (correctly signed) standard extensions itself. All you need is a simple bootstrap JAR in your application/applet that references the standard extensions JARs in its Manifest, see <http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/guide/extensions/versioning.html>. This also provides a mechanism for automatically upgrading versions of standard extensions. N.B. by design this will/should only work with correctly signed JARs.
If you take this approach it is probably worth splitting JmolApplet.jar into several separate JARs, particularly the 3rd party JARs, to avoid conflicts in situations where a user already has the 3rd party JARs installed.
Q: Do you know of any examples where someone is using Java web-start to install standard extensions?
I'm not aware of specific examples but Java Web Start certainly lists installation of optional packages as one of its features <http://java.sun.com/products/javawebstart/architecture.html>. Again, I believe JARs will need to be correctly signed for this to work.
Q: Is there an easy/standard way to detect where the JRE is installed on the end-user's system?
A Java application/applet can tell this from the following system properties, e.g.
java.home = /usr/java/j2sdk1.4.2/jre java.ext.dirs = /usr/java/j2sdk1.4.2/jre/lib/ext
Type 's' into your Java Console for a complete list.
You no longer need the archive attribute in your applet tag because all classes in the standard extensions JARs are automatically available to the JRE class-loader.
And this will even work if the archive attribute is present. So it gives people a solution for offline use/development.
Yes - although you need to be careful because I think standard extensions JARs are searched before JARs referenced in the archive attribute.
Regards, Chris.
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