title: What are the Windows tar.gz files for the Java JRE (7, 8)?
body: <p>From what I can tell from the tests I did during the last hour, Oracle finally(*) included "xcopy style" packages for the Java JRE on Windows - even for the <em>non</em> server version.</p>
  
  <p>And yes, I know what a gzipped tar file is. It's just that there is no documentation of these files -- vs. the executable installer for Windows <em>is</em> documented.</p>
  
  <p>Looking at the <a href="http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jre7-downloads-1880261.html" rel="nofollow">current Java 7</a> or <a href="http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jre8-downloads-2133155.html" rel="nofollow">8 download pages</a> for the non-server JRE, I see:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Windows x86 Online    jre-7u67-windows-i586-iftw.exe</li>
  <li>Windows x86 Offline   jre-7u67-windows-i586.exe</li>
  <li><strong>Windows x86         <code>jre-7u67-windows-i586.tar.gz</code></strong></li>
  <li>Windows x64           jre-7u67-windows-x64.exe</li>
  <li><strong>Windows x64         jre-7u67-windows-x64.tar.gz</strong></li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>These zipped files don't appear to be mentioned in any docs I could google up, yet their purpose seems to be to not have to run any installer, just copy them to a machine, set up the path(s) correctly, and run them. (and run it does, I tested that).</p>
  
  <p>Still, no mention or docs at all seems odd. So is there any official mentioning of the introduction of these <code>tar.gz</code> files for Windows?  As far as I can tell from the <a href="http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/java-archive-downloads-javase7-521261.html#jre-7u7-oth-JPR" rel="nofollow">historical downloads</a>, they were introduced in <a href="http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/7u9-relnotes-1863279.html" rel="nofollow">J7u9</a> - and for Java 8 apparently with 8u20.</p>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p><sub>(*) "finally" is relative ... J7u9 is from 2012-10-16, so it's really not recent, but I only now start to look into getting J6 stuff to run on J7 / J8, so it's nice to see those now.</sub></p>