The Java Development Kit (JDK) is a Sun Microsystems product aimed at Java developers. Since the introduction of Java, it has been by far the most widely used Java SDK. On 17 November 2006, Sun announced that it would be released under the GNU General Public License (GPL), thus making it free software. This happened in large part on 8 May 2007[1] and the source code was contributed to the OpenJDK.
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JDK contents
The primary components of the JDK are a selection of programming tools, including:
- java – The launcher for Java applications. This tool is an interpreter and can interpret the class files generated by the javac compiler. Now a single launcher is used for both development and deployment. The old deployment launcher, jre, is no longer provided with Sun JDK.
- javac – The compiler, which converts source code into Java bytecode
- jar – The archiver, which packages related class libraries into a single JAR file. This tool also helps managing jar files (archived java class files)
- javadoc – The documentation generator, which automatically generates documentation from source code comments
- jdb – The debugger
- javap – The class file disassembler
- appletviewer – This tool can be used to run and debug Java applets without a web browser
- javah – This is the C header and stub generator and used to write native methods
- extecheck – This utility can detect Jar conflicts
- apt – The annotation processing tool
- jhat – (Experimental) Java heap analysis tool
- jstack – (Experimental) This utility prints Java stack traces of Java threads
- jstat – (Experimental) Java Virtual Machine statistics monitoring tool
- jstatd – (Experimental) jstat daemon
- jinfo – (Experimental) This utility gets configuration information from a running Java process or crash dump
- jmap – (Experimental) This utility outputs the memory map for Java and can print shared object memory maps or heap memory details of a given process or core dump
- idlj – The IDL-to-Java compiler. This utility generates Java bindings from a given IDL file.
- policytool – The policy creation and management tool, which can determine policy for a Java runtime, specifying which permissions are available for code from various sources
The JDK also comes with a complete Java Runtime Environment, usually called a private runtime. It consists of a Java Virtual Machine and all of the class libraries that will be present in the production environment, as well as additional libraries only useful to developers, such as the internationalization libraries and the IDL libraries. Also included are a wide selection of example programs demonstrating the use of almost all portions of the Java API.
Ambiguity between a JDK and an SDK
The JDK is a subset of what is loosely defined as a Software development kit (SDK) in the general sense. In the descriptions which accompany their recent releases for Java SE, EE, and ME, Sun acknowledge that under their terminology, the JDK forms the subset of the SDK which is responsible for the writing and running of Java programs. The remainder of the SDK is composed of extra software, such as Application Servers, Debuggers, and Documentation.
Other JDKs
There are other JDKs commonly available for a variety of platforms, some of which started from the Sun JDK source and some which did not. All of them adhere to the basic Java specifications, but they often differ in areas that are explicitly unspecified, such as garbage collection, compilation strategies, and optimization techniques. They include:
- IBM's J9 JDK, for AIX, Linux, MVS, OS/400, Pocket PC, z/OS [1]
- Blackdown Java – The Blackdown Group's port of Sun's JDK for Linux
- Apple's MacOS Runtime for Java JVM/JDK for Mac OS X [2]
References
See also
| Free software Portal |
External links
- Sun Java SE – Sun's current stable release (6).
- [3] Open source JDK 7 project
- [4] Open source JDK project
- [5] Community support
- GNU Classpath – a free JDK replacement.
- Apache Harmony under the Apache License 2.0
- BEA JRockit – BEA's JDK.
- [6] Javadoc Developer Kit (JDK) Search Engine.
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| Sun technologies | Java programming language · Java ME · Java SE · Java EE · Java Development Kit · OpenJDK · Java Virtual Machine · Java Runtime Environment · JavaFX |  |
| Major third-party technologies | GNU Classpath · GNU Compiler for Java · Kaffe · Apache Harmony · Apache Struts · Spring framework · Hibernate · JBoss application server | |
| History | Java version history · Criticism of Java · Java Community Process · Sun Microsystems · Free Java implementations | |
| Language features | Bytecode · Syntax · Applets · Servlets · JavaServer Pages · Web Start | |
| Scripting languages | Java Tcl · Jython · JRuby · BeanShell · Groovy · Judoscript · Sleep · Bean Scripting Framework · Yoix · Rhino | |
