How to extract ONLY the contents of the JDK installer

I use 7-zip to do that. It seems to handle that installer/self-extracting executables nicely.

Here's .bat script for unpacking "pack" files. Must be run in the root of unzipped JDK.

@echo off
echo **********************
echo unpack JDK pack-files
echo **********************
pause

set JAVA_HOME=c:\glassfish4\jdk7

setlocal enableextensions
for /r %%f in (*) do call :process %%f
endlocal
goto :eof

:process
if NOT "%~x1" == ".pack" goto :eof
set FOLDER=%~p1

set PWD=%CD%
pushd %FOLDER%
echo Unpacking %~nx1
%JAVA_HOME%\bin\unpack200.exe %~nx1 %~n1.jar
popd

goto :eof

You can do the installation once and then zip up the installed stuff placed under \Programs\Java.

This can be unzipped elsewhere later and used as a JDK in most IDE's without needing a full reinstall (but then Windows does not know about it)

I've created cygwin script to do that: https://gist.github.com/4ndrew/f9dca61cedf0e8340b54

#!/bin/sh
# usage example: prepareJdk.sh jdk-7u67-windows-x64.exe (result will be in jdk/)
# Requires: p7zip, unzip

JDK_EXE=$1
7z x -ojdk "$JDK_EXE"
unzip jdk/tools.zip -d jdk/

find jdk/ -type f \( -name "*.exe" -o -name "*.dll" \) -exec chmod u+rwx {} \;

rm jdk/tools.zip
find jdk/ -type f -name "*.pack" | while read eachFile; do
   echo "Unpacking $eachFile ...";
  ./jdk/bin/unpack200.exe $eachFile ${eachFile%.pack}.jar;
  rm $eachFile;
done