 <p>I would definitely first try out Webstart. We've had lots of success launching even the early Eclipse RCP apps using Webstart, and you can probably not get more funky classloading issues than with the OSGI framework (Eclipse Equinox). </p> <p>Could you perhaps give some more detail in your question about you classloading approach?</p> <p>Regarding the GC and other VM settings: these are easy to specify in your JNLP (Java Network Launching Protocol) files used by Webstart for launching apps.</p>