We have an existing java-based heavyweight project that needed an interactive script interpreter. After

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Asked: May 13, 20262026-05-13T06:33:26+00:00 2026-05-13T06:33:26+00:00

We have an existing java-based heavyweight project that needed an interactive script interpreter. After

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We have an existing java-based heavyweight project that needed an interactive script interpreter. After a fair amount of research we eventually ended up with Jython, one of the reasons being that the customer’s group already has a large amount of python expertise, and it’s an easier sell to give them an api in a language close to one they already know.

Alright, well at first this was fine, but there turned out to be a problem- there are deployment environments which are locked down for ordinary, (ie: non-admin) users. Such ordinary users have no permission to write anywhere on the local drives of their machines. Additionally, their $Home (on windows) is usually over a high-latency network (often 100ms+), and to top it off, the size of the writeable folder itself is usually below 10mb. Yes, that’s megabytes.

Given these restrictions, it looks like Jython may not fit the bill. We need to be able to run without access to a low-latency disk cache, even if that means a small speed penalty. After a search through Google and the forums, there doesn’t appear to be a way in Jython to accomplish this.

There are a couple obvious workarounds:

Get the customer to open up their security. Unfortunately, it’s a large bureaucracy and trying to justify changing an enterprise-wide security policy to provide scripting for one product isn’t really an option.
Set up a ramdisk and put the script interpreter’s cache there. The problem with this approach on windows is that it involves a level of interference with the OS that will remain whether our application is running or not. (At least as I understand the techniques for doing so)

So here’s my plea – does anyone know of a java scripting interpreter that has an interactive mode and does not necessarily require a disk cache? It does not necessarily need to use python syntax, if there’s a way to get others, (ie: javaLUA, Groovy, etc) to do this, I’d be open to it.