Compact Profiles, introduced in JDK 8, enable reduced memory footprint for applications that do not require the entire Java platform. The javac compiler has a -profile option, which allows the application to be compiled using one of the supported profiles.
There are three supported profiles: compact1, compact2 and compact3. These are additive layers, so that each Profile contains all of the APIs in profiles smaller than itself. The compact profiles feature is useful in small devices. It also can be used to shorten the time to download an application from an "app store." It makes for more compact deployment of Java applications that bundle the JRE. A JRE can be configured with a compact profile, reducing its footprint for deployment along with a compact profile application.
