The Java Development Kit (JDK) is a Sun product aimed at Java developers. Since the introduction of Java, it has been by far the most widely used Java SDK.

The primary components of the JDK are a selection of programming tools, including:

• javac – The compiler, which converts source code into Java bytecode
• jar – The archiver, which packages related class libraries into a single file
• javadoc – The documentation generator, which automatically generates documentation from source code comments
• jdb – The debugger

The JDK also comes with a complete Java Runtime Environment, usually called a private runtime. This contains all of the class libraries that will be present in the production environment, as well as additional libraries only useful to developers, such as the internationalization libraries and the IDL libraries.

Also included are a wide selection of example programs demonstrating the use of almost all portions of the Java API.