GraalVM for JDK 21

GraalVM is a hugely under-appreciated piece of technology. A lot of my initial interest came from being able to blend different languages into a single runtime via the polyglot APIs, but the combination of performance, strong sandboxing support, and multi-language support has helped it emerge as a key primitive for anyone wishing to build extensible platforms without sacrificing speed, security, or developer ergonomics.

Re: GraalVM for JDK 21

#5

Post by _ea1k » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 4:17 PM UTC

I just wish the compile times weren't so painfully slow. It makes it really difficult to work with.

Re: GraalVM for JDK 21

#6

Post by weinzierl » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 4:29 PM UTC

mgdev wrote: post #4

GraalVM is a hugely under-appreciated piece of technology. A lot of my initial interest came from being able to blend different languages into a single runtime via the polyglot APIs, but the combination of performance, strong sandboxing support, and multi-language support has helped it emerge as a key primitive for anyone wishing to build extensible platforms without sacrificing speed, security, or developer ergonomi…

It's fascinating technology, but in my opinion too little, too late.

Compiling with GraalVM is still a pain and will not work out-of-the-box without modifications for any non-trivial project. This is mostly, I believe, not GraalVM's fault, because it can only do so much within the confines of the existing ecosystem.

If only AoT compilation to native code would have been taken seriously from the start, if only gcj would have gotten more attention, we could have ended up with an ecosystem that is somewhat amenable to what GraalVM tries to do.

As much as I like GraalVM and wish it success, my prediction is that in a few years it will be in the same state gcj has been quite some years now.

Re: GraalVM for JDK 21

#7

Post by doctorpangloss » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 4:29 PM UTC

mgdev wrote: post #4

GraalVM is a hugely under-appreciated piece of technology. A lot of my initial interest came from being able to blend different languages into a single runtime via the polyglot APIs, but the combination of performance, strong sandboxing support, and multi-language support has helped it emerge as a key primitive for anyone wishing to build extensible platforms without sacrificing speed, security, or developer ergonomi…

The NodeJS performance is really bad for many use cases, such as anything you do to build a web app. It has a long way to go in terms of becoming practical.

Re: GraalVM for JDK 21

#8

Post by alberth » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 4:34 PM UTC

What’s the latest on Truffle/Ruby supporting Rails?

Wouldn’t this provide massive gains for the Rails ecosystem once delivered?

(And with the GraalVM licenses changes to be more favorable/permission, I have to imagine there would be significant adoption)

Re: GraalVM for JDK 21

#9

Post by jcadam » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 4:36 PM UTC

Seems like every time I try to use Graal - there's some dependency in my project that doesn't like it.

Re: GraalVM for JDK 21

#10

Post by shellac » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 4:36 PM UTC

weinzierl wrote: post #6

mgdev wrote: post #4

GraalVM is a hugely under-appreciated piece of technology. A lot of my initial interest came from being able to blend different languages into a single runtime via the polyglot APIs, but the combination of performance, strong sandboxing support, and multi-language support has helped it emerge as a key primitive for anyone wishing to build extensible platforms without sacrificing speed, security, or developer ergonomi…

It's fascinating technology, but in my opinion too little, too late. Compiling with GraalVM is still a pain and will not work out-of-the-box without modifications for any non-trivial project. This is mostly, I believe, not GraalVM's fault, because it can only do so much within the confines of the existing ecosystem. If only AoT compilation to native code would have been taken seriously from the start, if only gcj wou…

> [...] my prediction is that in a few years it will be in the same state gcj has been quite some years now.

You make it sound like GraalVM is just for ahead-of-time compiling like gcj, but there's more to it than native image. It's possible GraalVM will be openjdk's jit compiler, for example.