All of my customers applications that use Java Web Start have been upgraded to the new Java 5.0 version. My first app that I upgraded was about 5 months ago. Now I am done upgrading my second customer app. So I am taking this opportunity now to note some the weird caveats and problems with using Java Web Start with Java 5.0.
Where in the world are the jnlp jar files?
The jar files aren't easy to locate, in fact, the folks at Sun Microsystems didn't do a great job of making them easily accessible. One location is <JRE_HOME>/lib/javaws.jar (Note: It says JRE and not JDK). This isn't the best folder to find everything that you need because there is no jnlp servlet jar file. So, the absolute best place to locate the files that you need is <JDK_HOME>/sample/jnlp/servlet. Here you should find three files jnlp.jar, jnlp-servlet.jar, and jardiff.jar. You can place these in your classpath on your machine or copy them over to the lib directory of whatever project that you are developing, which is my preference.
com.sun.javaws.servlet.JnlpDownloadServlet is not found!!!
Well, the reason for that would be that the name of the servlet used for jnlp has changed. The correct class name is now jnlp.sample.servlet.JnlpDownloadServlet. I know, I know, the little things really can mess up your day.
If anyone in blogosphere has some extra weirdness they encounter send me a link or post a comment. That information is great to know.