I have several scripts written in perl, python, and java (wrapped under java GUI with system calls to perl & python).  And I have many not-tech-savy users that need to use this in their windows machines (xp & 7).
To avoid users from installing perl,python,and java and to avoid potential incompatibility between various versions of these interpreters, I'd like to make a local copy of these interpreters in a folder and then calling them.  I'd zip the whole folder (which would also contain my code) and send it away.
I'd have to worry about environment variables and make calls to the correct interpreter (especially when other versions of python,java,perl may exists in their current system), but not sure what other problems I may face.  Any better ideas?
I never used jython and do not know the overhead of moving to it.  I also suspect a complex python system, with many files and 3rd party modules will have problems.  Same with perl scripts and I don't know a robust perl interpreter callable from java.
Thank you, in advance.
Why don't you try migrating your perl/python code into java and then packagin everything into a nice webstart application? What do perl/python offer that java doesn't support?
For perl you can use something like perl2exe and for python py2exe so you can have 2 exes (which would include all the necessary interpreter bits)  and invoke them as resources from within java? Or unzip them inside user's home directory and call them again as normal external programs (ProcessBuilder ?) ?
Package them all! Perl, python, java for naive users (in windows)