Java Development Kit

Encyclopedia : J : JA : JAV : Java Development Kit

The Java Development Kit (JDK) is a Sun product aimed at Java developers. Since the introduction of Java, it has been by far the most widely used Java SDK.

The primary components of the JDK are a selection of programming tools, including:

javac – The compiler, which converts source code into Java bytecode
jar – The archiver, which packages related class libraries into a single JAR file
javadoc – The documentation generator, which automatically generates documentation from source code comments
jdb – The debugger

The JDK also comes with a complete Java Runtime Environment, usually called a private runtime. This contains 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.

External Links

[Sun J2SE] – Sun's current stable release (1.5.0).
[Mustang] – Sun's beta releases of its JVM and JDK (1.6.0).
[GNU Classpath] – a free JDK replacement.
[IBM JDK] – IBM's JDK.
[Blackdown] – Free JVM/JDK for Linux.
[Apple Java] – JVM/JDK for Mac OS X.

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