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The author is an employee of JetBrain. I believe JetBrian is using jlink [1], a tool that let you embed the modules of the JDK you need with your application, for all their products since they have migrated to JDK 11.

[1] https://docs.oracle.com/en/java/javase/11/tools/jlink.html

Is bundling the JVM with the app really such a huge deal on desktops? I know it would add a bunch to the binary size but what are the other issues?

Isn't Microsofts solution, starting with .NET 5, essentially the same as Java's jlink/javapackager – i.e. minify and bundle the whole runtime with the app?