The Java Development Kit (JDK) is an Oracle Corporation product aimed at Java developers. Since the introduction of Java, it has been by far the most widely used Java Software Development Kit (SDK).
The JDK has as its primary components a collection of programming tools, including:
java – the loader 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 The old deployment launcher, jre, no longer comes with Sun JDK, and instead it has been replaced by this new java loader.
Here are few basic commands supported by JDK/JSDK and which are must to learn for every JAVA beginner. Ask your tutors / teachers to discuss these commands.
javac – the compiler, which converts source code into Java bytecode
appletviewer – this tool can be used to run and debug Java applets without a web browser
apt – the annotation-processing tool
extcheck – a utility which can detect JAR-file conflicts
idlj – the IDL-to-Java compiler. This utility generates Java bindings from a given Java IDL file.
javadoc – the documentation generator, which automatically generates documentation from source code comments
jar – the archiver, which packages related class libraries into a single JAR file. This tool also helps manage JAR files.
javah – the C header and stub generator, used to write native methods
javap – the class file disassembler
javaws – the Java Web Start launcher for JNLP applications
jconsole – Java Monitoring and Management Console
jdb – the debugger
jhat – Java Heap Analysis Tool (experimental)
jinfo – This utility gets configuration information from a running Java process or crash dump. (experimental)
jmap – 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. (experimental)
jps – Java Virtual Machine Process Status Tool lists the instrumented HotSpot Java Virtual Machines (JVMs) on the target system. (experimental)
jrunscript – Java command-line script shell.
jstack – utility which prints Java stack traces of Java threads (experimental)
jstat – Java Virtual Machine statistics monitoring tool (experimental)
jstatd – jstat daemon (experimental)
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
VisualVM – visual tool integrating several command-line JDK tools and lightweight[clarification needed] performance and memory profiling capabilities
wsimport – generates portable JAX-WS artifacts for invoking a web service.
xjc – Part of the Java API for XML Binding (JAXB) API. It accepts an XML schema and generates Java classes.
****Experimental tools may not be available in future versions of the JDK.
The JDK also comes with a complete Java Runtime Environment, usually called a private runtime, due to the fact that it is separated from the “regular” JRE and has extra contents. It consists of a Java Virtual Machine and all of the class libraries present in the production environment, as well as additional libraries only useful to developers, such as the internationalization libraries and the IDL libraries.
Latest JDK edition can be downloaded from the following link:
