What is the difference between JDK and JRE?

Question

What is the difference between JDK and JRE?

What are their roles and when should I use one or the other?

Answer 1

JVM, JRE and JDK are platform dependent because configuration of each OS differs. But, Java is platform independent.

Java Virtual Machine (JVM) is a run-time system that executes Java bytecode.

JRE is the environment (standard libraries and JVM) required to run Java applications.

The JDK includes the JRE plus command-line development tools such as compilers and debuggers that are necessary or useful for developing applets and applications.