Programmatically determine what JDK/JRE's are installed on my box

Question

Is there a standard way to do this? I realize this can be somewhat platform dependent. Our product right now is only supported on Windows - so I suppose that\'s what I\'m

Answer 1

I would firstly start by looking for the JAVA_HOME environment variable (and possibly JDK_HOME although thats far less common) and then determining what version that is and whether it's a JDK or JRE.

After that check for common instead locations. Find out the system's program files directory (don't just assume it's C:\Program Files even though it is 99.5% of the time) and look for common install locations under that (eg Java).

I wouldn't do an exhaustive search.

It's worth asking: do you really need to find JDKs this way? Can't you just ask the user what JDK he or she wishes to use, possibly suggesting any easy ones you've found already?