Some have recently pointed out that JSR 277 might be the answer to some of the items mentioned in my last post. There isn’t much to go on simply by reading the JSR page, but does appear to be a step in the right direction. But we’ll have to wait until Java 7 to find out. However, it doesn’t sound like that you’d be able to create a desktop application from a single archive. The JSR is new, so it could evolve. Here’s to being hopeful!