A couple of years ago I did some experiments to see how small you could make HotSpot and still have something usable. I got it down to a 7mb download but that required some tricks:
- .tar.zstd
- A custom build of HotSpot that compiled out some optional features.
- It was just java.base, no swing
You can get smaller if you do DCE / tree shaking more aggressively, or use a custom JVM designed for size. The smallest I've seen was Avian which can produce GUI apps that are 1mb standalone binaries. It's abandoned unfortunately.
- .tar.zstd
- A custom build of HotSpot that compiled out some optional features.
- It was just java.base, no swing
You can get smaller if you do DCE / tree shaking more aggressively, or use a custom JVM designed for size. The smallest I've seen was Avian which can produce GUI apps that are 1mb standalone binaries. It's abandoned unfortunately.