Native Image Committer and Community Meeting 2023-08-24

[christianwimmer]

List of all past and upcoming meetings: #3933

New and Noteworthy

• Feature freeze for GraalVM 23.1 has passed. It is still possible to merge bugfixes for a bit.
  The next feature freeze for GraalVM 24.0 is on Dec. 7, aligned with the branch-off of JDK 22 for OpenJDK.

• Experimental option handling ([GR-47647] Explicit Experimental Option Handling #7105): In GraalVM 23.1 a warning is printed when experimental options are used without unlocking them. This will be converted to an error in the next release. Instead of just "unlocking" experimental options, please try to remove them, or let us know which options should be non-experimental.
  [GR-47647] Introduce -H:±UnlockExperimentalVMOptions. #7190
  [GR-47647] [GR-47928] [GR-47692] Fix and improve experimental option handling. #7222

• Enable the new class initialization strategy ([GR-39406] Add new class initialization strategy that allows all classes to be used at image build time. #4684): All classes can now used at image build time, regardless of their --initialize-at-build-time configuration. Only classes marked as --initialize-at-build-time are allowed in the image heap.
  Enable new class initialization strategy by default #6544
  [GR-39406] Simplify class initialization configuration for Lambda classes. #7094

• New method handle intrinsification: Replacement for the IntrinsifyMethodHandlesInvocationPlugin which has many limitations and problems.
  [GR-29688] New method handle intrinsification. #7196

• Enable ParseOnce for JIT compilation (Parse bytecode only once when building a native image #4923):
  [GR-46494] EnableParseOnceJIT. #7174
  [GR-44459] Track extra metadata about DeoptEntry/DeoptProxyAnchor nodes. #6891
  [GR-42162] Add support for tracking inlining during inlinebeforeanalysis. #7163
  [GR-47165] Add ParseOnceJIT support for Deopt Testing. #7026

• Project Panama foreign call support: Work in progress, but some support is merged now.
  [GR-46740] Support JEP 424 ("Panama") foreign down calls in Native Image. #7152
  [GR-47831] Preparations for JEP 424 ("Panama") foreign upcalls in Native Image. #7238

• Throw exceptions for missing configuration ([GR-40106] Reporting missing metadata in Native Image by throwing special exceptions #5171)
  [GR-47365] Throw missing registration errors for proxy classes #7060
  [GR-42114] Integrate missing resource metadata #7179
  [GR-42113] Fixes for serialization reflection registration. #7230
  [GR-46823] Bugfixes for missing registration errors #7189
  [GR-47056] Do not print reflection warnings in JSON files. #7157

• Truffle Unchained:
  [GR-43819] Split Graal-SDK into new modules: polyglot, word, collections and nativeimage. (Unchained Part 7) #7171
  [GR-44222] [GR-47557] Separate SVM and Truffle (Unchained Part 6). #7102

• Containerized builds: Allow image builds to be isolated in a container, based on bundle support. Also, bundles are executable jar files now.
  Implement containerized native image building for native image bundles #6496

• Performance
  [GR-47084] Change the compliance of com.oracle.svm.core.annotate and org.graalvm.home to JDK11. #6949
  [GR-47580] Initialize the physical memory size eagerly. #7259
  [GR-46636] Improve performance of java.lang.reflect.Proxy.isProxyClass(). #6920

• Compatibility:
  [GR-46420] Use cgroup support from JDK. #7265

• Monitoring / tools:
  [GR-43134] Add support for profiling of topmost frame. #7003
  [GR-43979] Print reachability trace #7100
  [GR-47411] Make unique stub names stable. #7084
  [GR-38994] Add support for -XX:HeapDumpOnOutOfMemoryError. #7088
  [GR-47755] Refactor dwarf constants. #7158
  [GR-47106] Return to separate CUs per class to improve gdb startup time. #6984

Deep Dive: New method handle intrinsification