How to Get the Latest Jre/Jdk as a Zip File Rather Than Exe or Msi Installer

How can I get the latest JRE / JDK as a zip file rather than EXE or MSI installer?

You can download a Java Portable from PortableApps.com. It will not change your system settings. You can put it on your USB stick.

UPD: for those who needs JDK there's an open-source project OpenJDK Portable

UPD2: there is also a JDK Portable (Oracle)

Some people might be interested in official Oracle production-ready open source build of JDK

How can I get JAVA 9 JRE / JDK as a zip file rather than EXE or MSI installer?

Look at https://jdk9.java.net/ carefully there's "JDK 9 Early Access with Project Jigsaw" that is actually zip download.

JDK as Zip File only not JRE

It's really simple but, you have to make it yourself.

First, download the JDK from the Oracle Website.

Second, extract all the contents using 7zip or other extracting utility.

Third, navigate through the extracted content and use Java's "unpack200" to convert all the ".pack" files (there's a couple of them) into jar files. You can delete the ".pack" files afterwards if desired.

Note: In order to use unpack200 you need to have a JDK installed on the system. Navigate to the jdk1.x.x_xx/bin folder an run the utility from the command line.

Example: unpack200 rt.pack rt.jar

Thanks.

No src.zip when extracting JDK installer

As @PeterLawrey suggested, the best way is to use Linux distribution.

JDK 1.8 not being installed, only JRE on Windows

The link you've provided is correct.

You've most likely downloaded one of these items:

Windows x86 201.64 MB jdk-8u202-windows-i586.exe
Windows x64 211.58 MB jdk-8u202-windows-x64.exe

Something you can do:

Make sure to check both 'Program Files\Java' and 'Program Files (x86)\Java' folders. By default JDK should be installed there.
Use OS level search, to look for 'jdk1.8' or '1.8.0' folders
In case you're still missing it, you can try to manually extract the JDK folder from installer - https://stackoverflow.com/a/25384578/3523579