There's actually, imho, no need for native compilation for java tbh. Why isn't shipping the runtime with the code a more common practise? it's how intellij or eclipse worked. People today ship electron apps for god sakes!
If you _need_ native, for one reason or another and it's non-negotiable, then choose a native compiled language.
That's what I actually do for our product. The JRE is shipped with it as well as startup scripts and services registration bridge for Windows.
I guess the native compile thing is more for "Java on the Cloud" which tbh is not where Java shines. I say this as a long-term Java developer. Java is great for monoliths - on premises customers are supper happy. Java on the cloud seems like a waste of resources to me.
Compile to native makes sense only for very fast startup cases.
As for wasted resources - there are cases where the servers have to be deployed in specific jurisdictions (compliance) - it's easier to use AWS than manage tons of small sites. Still I don't see any need for native compilation.
It also makes sense to reduce container size and vulnerability surface, and to reduce warmup time to peak JIT performance.
> Still I don't see any need for native compilation.
Sure, there isn't a "need," per se, just like there is not a "need" for JIT. This is how technology evolves. Things get better. Java's startup and time-to-peak performance are now comparable to native langs.
This actually works in the opposite way - JIT is a guided compilation which uses the input for best results. There are many optimizations done for multi call sites, e.g. static linking + guard, dual site inline, inline caches, and the v-table calls if all fails. Without guided optimization such decisions are not likely to happen.
In other words for peak runtime performance JIT would surpass ahead of time/native compilation.
>reduce container size
I would be exceptionally hard pressed to find a single case where that would matter (aside specific client deployments) - server side and the like I'd not care about extra 100MB or so deployable. E.g. if I want really small footprint I'd go and do it all in pure C w/ an absolute min external library support.
>startup times
I already mentioned it - and anything not sub 0.5sec, Java does quite ok. There is a lot to be said about the use of DI frameworks with blatant class path scans, but that's not necessarily Java's fault.
I used to support Atlassian's products on the intranet before we migrated (almost) everything on their cloud: Jira, Bitbucket, Bamboo, Confluence. I think Jira and Bitbucket were hands down the slowest of the bunch to boot and from what I could tell it was exactly due to classpath-scanning and god knows what else. I could never believe a 16 CPU 32 GB KVM needs from 3 to sometimes 5 minutes just to boot Jira. To me this was insane.
However, for "simple" code (like arithmetic, or manipulation of bits, arrays etc), i think it's pretty much the same.
It really shouldn't be. It bloats everything. Containers are bigger. Software is bigger. There's no reason to do this, since very few apps use the entire surface area of a runtime (Python, Node, Java, etc).
Instead, a native GraalVM binary can embed all these things, including only the portions which the application needs to run. Thus it behaves like a dynamic piece of software during development, but a static, high-performance, low-surface-area-of-vulnerability native binary in production.
> That's what I actually do for our product. The JRE is shipped with it as well as startup scripts
Please, as a user, I implore you to look into native targets. It's not as hard as it seems anymore. Some thins really do need Jlink.
> I guess the native compile thing is more for "Java on the Cloud"
Not so. GraalVM is great for embedded development. It's great for desktop development or even shared native library development.
> Java on the cloud seems like a waste of resources to me.
There is no difference now between C++ "in the cloud" and Java "in the cloud" except Java remains memory safe by default.
You are not my target. It's enterprise software - I'm given a Windows Server VM and the rights to install our software, that's it. Most IT admins don't even want to bother to install or let alone support JRE updates. We got tons of customers and this experience is uniform.
> It's great for desktop development
For desktop I'd totally use Jlink. Really the only possible place GraalVM's NI seems like a plausible fit to me is CLI tools and Java Microservices, where fast start and low memory consumption actually make sense. edit: But honestly at this point for Microservices I'd probably go with Go.
> Why isn't shipping the runtime with the code a more common practise?
Well, Java has jlink which is meant to do exactly that (ship the parts of the JVM you actually need, which is easy to figure out as there are tools to do that), and that's the recommended approach today for shipping anything Java.
Sure, that is true, but with native compilation available, Java can do even more things. There are other reasons, too: startup time, quicker time to peak performance, and better interfacing with FFM and JNI, to name a few.
> If you _need_ native, for one reason or another and it's non-negotiable, then choose a native compiled language.
You could do that, sure. But then you would need to worry about all the things that come with that. For example, memory safety -- GraalVM preserves memory safety guarantees with native binaries. Even binaries which themselves ship JIT features.
I'd say it is a pretty common thing. I can't tell you why it isn't the norm nowadays but it used to be that Sun and Oracle prohibited modifications to the JRE in their license. So you had ship the whole bloated thing or nothing to be compliant, even if it was technically not too hard to strip the JRE down to only the things your app needed.
It wasn't retroffied, rather only available behind a paywall, that is what kept companies like Excelsior JET in business.
OpenJ9 from IBM traces its roots back to Java AOT compilation to embedded development, used to be called WebSphere Real Time.
PTC and Aicas are two companies specialized in real time JVM implementations for embedded development, with military and factory automation as main customer targets, also supporting AOT compilation for decades.