1. A method of executing an application on a data processing system having a processor and at least one storage device connected to the processor, the method comprising: interpreting byte codes of an application by a virtual machine of the data processing system, the application being of a designated type, the virtual machine being stored on the at least one storage device to enable execution of the designated type by the processor independently of a kind of the processor and a kind of operating system software of the data processing system, the data processing system having a plurality of runtime environments for the designated type, each runtime environment including instructions stored on the least one storage device for execution by the processor to implement the virtual machine on the data processing system, the storage device having stored thereon a certain program for controlling the processor to select one of the runtime environments for the application, and the processor being operative with the certain program to execute the certain program for performing: a) parsing files of the data processing system's at least one storage device and retrieving information from the parsed files, the retrieved information being indicative of a set of compatible execution environments, each such compatible execution environment being suitable for executing the application; b) searching the information retrieved from the parsed files of the data processing system's at least one storage device to locate any compatible execution environments installed on the data processing system; c) responsive to locating at least one compatible execution environment installed on the data processing system, selecting a compatible execution environment from the located execution environments and executing the application within the selected execution environment; and d) responsive to failing to locate a compatible execution environment, generating a user detectable alert, the retrieving of the compatible execution environment information in a) being further characterized as retrieving prioritized execution environment information, and the selecting an execution environment in c) being further characterized as selecting, from the set of located execution environments, the execution environment having the highest priority, and the searching in b) comprising searching within a set of directories specified in a PATH variable of the data processing system, and the retrieving information in a) comprising retrieving a list of compatible runtime environments for the designated type from a manifest file of an archive associated with the application and from a network launch protocol file associated with the application.