Comment by w10-1 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by w10-1 | Hacker News Reader

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GraalVM is truly great stuff.

GraalVM native compilation helps Java in the data center to avoid being a cost sink and to reduce start-up latency. Oracle needs Java to sell enterprise software.

Oracle contributing to OpenJDK may be required for Amazon cooperation (since Amazon is pushing its own JDK build) and probably helps the library ecosystem work towards native compatibility.

Native support for reflection (used in many libraries) requires "reachability metadata", maps of reflective API usage, at build time. Anyone can do it, but enterprise requires authoritative sources. Until authoritative reachability metadata covers the transitive graph of library+version dependencies in enterprise software, GraalVM native AOT builds are a PITA.

- https://github.com/oracle/graalvm-reachability-metadata

- latest release: https://medium.com/graalvm/graalvm-22-3-is-here-jdk-19-build...

- graalvm "community" roadmap: https://github.com/orgs/oracle/projects/6

(As a side note: Mark Reinhold has run the JDK team since 1997: is there any comparable example of such stellar leadership for broadly-adopted software across multiple technical and organizational eras?)

Java has been on a freight train run for the past 5 years. It is exhausting to keep up with. From the demonic release pace, to the dramatic changes to the platform, it's been a rough ride for some.

But at the same time, it's also smooth sailing, and it's getting better all the time. It's still Java, for a bazillion applications it still "Just Works". It's still (IMHO) far more manageable and stable than many other platforms.

I think the combination of Oracle and the entire community around it have been marshaling it really well with little drama. Change, sure. But not Drama.

The Enterprise Edition departure was a big deal, but even that transitioned pretty well. That was no small task, and I think the vendors and framework folks have been handling that pretty well.

GraalVM is just another step forward for the entire community, and it is kind of Oracle (however motivated) to release it. In truth, I think, overall, Java has been mostly (mostly) Oracle free, despite their monster investments into the technology and community. They could have been a much less benevolent dictator.

Does graal native perform better than a non-native running with JIT compilation?

Not in the community edition, but the enterprise edition appears to be quicker than JIT because of profile guided optimisations.

In certain cases it may, but generally the JIT compiled version will perform better on most workloads (but that can also use Graal)

if it's "long" running, you want the full JIT experience, because you essentially lose the entire "But how does my code actually run" optimisations that the JIT can do, and only have stuff that can be done ahead of time.

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