GraalVM Release Candidates

1.0-RC16

(2019-04-23)

Java

We addressed several benchmarks that had slower performance when running with the GraalVM compiler built as a native library, also known as libgraal, a mode selected as the default in the last release candidate. We fixed an issue causing a delay when shutting down the virtual machine process at the end of the execution of an application (see #1140).

Native Image

We improved the structure of the org.graalvm.nativeimage API: classes that can only be used during image generation are now in the package org.graalvm.nativeimage.hosted, to clearly separate them from the classes that can be used at image run time. In order to stay backwards compatible, the original classes are still present, but marked as deprecated. They will be deleted in the next release candidate, so please update to the new classes.

We fixed several bugs that were reported on GitHub, including an issue with the logging framework which materialized as an error that no instances of java.util.logging.SimpleFormatter are allowed in the image heap.

As a result, native images work now correctly with Helidon, a Java framework designed for writing microservices which recently announced their support for GraalVM native images: Helidon flies faster with GraalVM.

Ruby

A complete changelog for the Ruby component is available on GitHub. The highlights include:

Rounding modes have been implemented or improved for Float, Rational, BigDecimal classes (see #1509).
Added a pure-Ruby implementation of Foreign Function Interface (FFI) which passes almost all Ruby FFI specs (see #1529).
The KeyError raised from ENV#fetch and Hash#fetch now matches MRI’s message formatting (see #1633).

JavaScript

A complete changelog for the JavaScript component is available on GitHub. The highlights include:

Loading JavaScript source code from URLs is now guarded by the js.load-from-url command line option and prohibited by default.

R

A complete changelog for the R component is available on GitHub. The highlights include:

Allow parsing any letter in identifiers including, e.g., Japanese, with lexer starting from 1.0-RC16, which matches GNU-R behavior.

Python

Improved startup time of the graalpython native launcher.

LLVM Runtime

The lli launcher now starts with the locale set to C.

1.0-RC15

(2019-04-05)

Java

By default, libgraal is now used when running the java launcher or when using the --jvm mode for the language launchers. The libgraal library is a version of the GraalVM compiler pre-compiled by native-image. In addition to improving startup time, libgraal completely prevents the GraalVM compiler from interfering with the heap usage and profiles of application code. It has execution properties similar to other native HotSpot compilers such as C1 and C2.

JavaScript

Enabled Polyglot builtin based on Context.Builder.allowPolyglotAccess().
Added rest and spread properties support for foreign objects. For example, this spread syntax is now supported:
```
var arr1 = [0, 1, 2];
var arr2 = [3, 4, 5];
arr1 = [...arr1, ...arr2]; // arr1 is now [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
```

To see a complete list of changes, please refer to the project changelog.

R

New Features

Implemented gzcon builtin for URL connections.

Changes

Truffle interoperability API converts double values to int values if they fit in the integer range.

Bug Fixes

R incorrectly allowed Java interoperability when not started with --jvm. Starting from 1.0-RC15, --jvm flag is again necessary to enable interoperability with Java.

A complete project changelog is available on GitHub.

Ruby

An extensive list of changes is available on GitHub. Here is a short list of the most notable ones:

Changes

Our experimental JRuby-compatible Java interop has been removed – use Polyglot and Java instead.
Process.clock_getres has been implemented.
debug, profile, profiler, which were already marked as unsupported, have been removed.

Bug Fixes

autoload :C, "path"; require "path" now correctly triggers the autoload.
The shell standard library can now be require-d.

Compatibility

Improved compatibility with MRI’s Float#to_s formatting #1626.
Added support for the base keyword argument to Dir.{[], glob}.

Python

Changes

Migrated to the new Truffle libraries for interoperability support.
Added support for importing Java classes from the java namespace using normal Python import syntax, e.g., from java.util import ArrayList.
Implemented PEP 487 and PEP 560 to make the typing module work.

More details can be found in the project changelog on GitHub.

LLVM Interpreter

Added a preliminary support for bitcode produced by LLVM 8.

Native Image

Based on the feedback and bug reports, we improved the agent that traces reflection and JNI usage on the JavaHotSpot VM. We also changed the implementation language of the agent from C to Java. The agent is now a Native Image itself.

The native-image-maven-plugin now supports multiline buildArgs and boolean parameter skip (skip image building if true).

API changes for GraalVM integrators (SDK + Truffle)

This version of GraalVM includes a major revision of the Truffle Interoperability APIs. Most existing APIs for Truffle Interoperability were deprecated. The compatibility layer may cause significant performance reduction for interoperability calls. Please see the Interop Migration Guide for an overview and individual @deprecated javadoc tags for guidance.

We added Truffle Library API that allows language implementations to use polymorphic dispatch for receiver types with support for implementation specific caching/profiling with support for uncached dispatch. Please see the Truffle Library Tutorial for further details.

The numerous changes were introduced to the GraalVM SDK Polyglot API as well:

Renamed Graal SDK to GraalVM SDK.
Experimental options now require --experimental-options on the command line to be passed to the GraalVM language launchers, or Context.Builder#allowExperimentalOptions and Engine.Builder#allowExperimentalOptions to be set in other scenarios. For example, to diagnose the memory allocations of a JavaScript application with --memtracer profiling tool, you should prepend --experimental-options option: js --experimental-options --memtracer program.js.
Added a possibility to set an encoding in Source builder.
Added a new API for target type mappings using the new HostAccess API.

We summarized all Truffle and SDK changes between GraalVM versions in separate changelogs:

Tools

Chrome Inspector

Object Preview feature added for GraalVM implementation of JavaScript.
Implemented a Custom Preview experimental feature for all languages supported by GraalVM.

Ideal Graph Visualizer (IGV)

Starting with 1.0-RC15 version of GraalVM, Ideal Graph Visualizer will be provided as standalone download from Oracle Technology Network Downloads page. It is not part of GraalVM Community or Enterprise editions.

1.0-RC14

(2019-03-18)

Introducing `--vm.<option>`

We introduced a uniform --vm.<option> which allows to pass options in a uniform way, without knowing which VM mode (--jvm, or --native) will be used. It replaces --jvm.<option> and --native.<option> command line options, e.g., the option to configure the maximum amount of memory used for the heap --jvm.Xmx=5G becomes --vm.Xmx=5G. This applies to all languages.

Java

libgraal

This is the first release to include a prebuilt libgraal shared library. This shared library is produced by the native-image and contains a pre-compiled version of the GraalVM compiler. In addition to improving startup, libgraal completely avoids interfering with the heap usage and profiling of the application code. That is, it has execution properties similar to other native HotSpot compilers such as C1 and C2. To try it out, add -XX:+UseJVMCINativeLibrary to your java command line. Note that this is still a work in progress and we are focusing on improving its stability and ensuring it does not compromise peak performance.

Default Failure Behavior

The default behavior has changed for a failure (i.e., uncaught exception) during the compilation. These are now silently ignored and nothing is printed to the console. To get the old behavior of a message being printed to the console and for collecting diagnostics about the failure, you now need to specify -Dgraal.CompilationFailureAction=Diagnose option.

Native Images

New Features

We introduced a tracing agent for the Java HotSpot VM that records usages of reflection and JNI that can then be converted to configuration files for the native image generator. This simplifies the process of getting new applications working as native images. For details, see the documentation.

We improved support for the java.util.logging API. See the GitHub docs for details.

The javax.script.ScriptEngine API is now supported. Please note that the Nashorn JavaScript engine does not work in native images and is therefore always excluded. However, Truffle based language implementations such as the GraalVM JavaScript engine are available when, e.g., the native image is built with the option --language:js.

Implemented the Class.getSimpleName method for the native images (see 1020).

Bugfixes

Fixed an NPE during native image generation at accessing annotations metadata on the classes opened for reflection (see 1048).
Fixed createTempFile() providing non-default filesystem and failing (see 1035).
Fixed a segfault due to incorrect socket address length value (see 1025).

JavaScript

HTML-like Comments

We added support for HTML-like comments.

var s = "Introducing html-like comments";
alert(s);
<!-- this is a comment -->

Changes

Renamed the option js.experimental-array-prototype to js.experimental-foreign-object-prototype.

More details can be found in the project changelog on GitHub.

R

The GraalVM implementation of R in this release comes with various bug fixes and improvements.

Error Propagation

According to the R semantics, errors are handled immediately at the point where they are raised. However, in language embedding or polyglot scenarios, it is more useful to have the errors propagate out of the R scope, so that they can be handled correctly. We changed the behavior of FastR in this regard so that now R errors are propagated. Note that this only happens if this is possible without causing unexpected side effect in R code, i.e., if there are no options(error = ...) or on.exit(...) handlers on the stack.

Experimental Options

All specific options (NOT those GNU-R compatible like --save) are experimental except for --R.PrintErrorStacktracesToFile, which is an option that enables logging of FastR internal errors for bug reporting purposes. Experimental options can be unlocked using --experimental-options or with ContextBuilder#allowExperimentalOptions.

To see a complete list of changes, please refer to the project changelog.

Ruby

This version of GraalVM features new methods implementations and other updates for Ruby implementation.

New Features

Implemented Dir.children and Dir#children, String#delete_prefix, #delete_suffix and related methods.

Changes

-Xlog= has been removed. Use --log.level= instead.
-J flag has been removed. Use --vm.* instead.
-J-cp lib.jar and similar have been removed. You should use --vm.cp=lib.jar or --vm.classpath=lib.jar instead.
The -X option now works as in MRI.

An extensive list of changes is available on GitHub.

Python

Python 3.7.0

The standard library was updated to Python 3.7.0 from 3.6.5.

Changes

Defined a subset of the graalpython launcher options as “stable”. All other options are subject to change and need to be unlocked explicitly on the command line.
Added the support for -I flag to ignore the user environment and not add the working directory to sys.path.

More details can be found in the project changelog on GitHub.

LLVM Runtime

Various bug fixes.

API Changes for GraalVM Integrators (SDK + Truffle)

New Features

Added Context.Builder#allowExperimentalOptions to control whether experimental options can be passed to a Context.
Added Engine.Builder#allowExperimentalOptions to control whether experimental instrument and engine options can be passed.
The @Option annotation can now specify the stability of an option.
Added engine bound TruffleLogger for instruments. The engine bound logger can be used by threads executing without any context.

Changes

Multiple deprecated elements were removed from the Truffle language implementation framework, i.e., TruffleException.isTimeout, EventBinding.getFilter etc..

We summarized GraalVM Truffle and GraalVM SDK changes between GraalVM versions in the separate changelogs:

1.0-RC13

(2019-03-05)

Tools

Ideal Graph Visualizer

With GraalVM 1.0-RC13 release, there has been a significant change to the Ideal Graph Visualizer developer tool. The default behavior of the Dgraal.Dump option has changed in that IGV dumps are now written to the local file system by default. To get the old behavior of dumping straight to an IGV instance listening on 127.0.0.1:4445, you need to add -Dgraal.PrintGraph=Network option. If a network connection cannot be opened, dumping falls back to file system dumping.

Graal VisualVM

Another developer tool, Graal VisualVM, now allows Heap monitoring of native-image processes. This functionality is available with Oracle GraalVM.

R

R specific command line options are now passed as –R.PrintErrorStackTracesToFile=true instead of using JVM properties (–jvm.R:+PrintErrorStackTracesToFile). You can view available options with --help:languages.
Optional post installation script, configure_fastr, also regenerates etc/Renviron and etc/ldpaths files according to the target system.
R vectors are not writeable from other languages, because this would violate the R language semantics.

A list of changes to GraalVM implementation of R is available on GitHub.

JavaScript

Node.js updated from 10.15.0 to version 10.15.2.
Made JavaScript and Java interoperability available in native images. Note that you have to configure the accessible classes and methods at native image build time.
Node.js Worker class should be used instead of deprecated experimental Java.Worker API now.
A deprecated NashornJavaInterop mode was removed.

More details can be found in the project changelog on GitHub.

LLVM Runtime

Added the support for embedded bitcode in Mach-O files. We support bitcode in the __bitcode section of Mach-O object files, as well as bitcode files in an embedded xar archive in the __bundle section of executables or dylibs. For example, on OS X, you can compile your code with clang -fembed-bitcode -flto hello.c -o hello, creating a native executable with embedded bitcode. You can then run it natively (./hello) or with GraalVM ($JAVA_HOME/bin/lli ./hello).

The full project changelog is available on GitHub.

Ruby

This release of GraalVM is rich in performance and compatibility improvements, multiple changes and bug fixes for Ruby implementation.

An extensive list of all updates is available on Github. Here is a short list of most notable ones:

New features:

Host interoperability with Java now works on SubstrateVM too.

Changes:

-Xoptions has been deprecated and will be removed. Use --help:languages instead.
-Xlog= has been deprecated and will be removed. Use --log.level= instead.
-J has been deprecated and will be removed. Use --jvm. instead.
-J-cp lib.jar and so on have been deprecated and will be removed. Use --jvm.cp=lib.jar or --jvm.classpath=lib.jar instead.
-J-cmd, --jvm.cmd, JAVA_HOME, JAVACMD, and JAVA_OPTS do not work in any released configuration of TruffleRuby, so have been removed.
-Xoption=value has been deprecated and will be removed. Use --option=value instead.
TracePoint.trace and TracePoint#inspect have been implemented.

Compatibility:

Improved the exception when an -S file is not found.
Removed the message from exceptions raised by bare raise to better match MRI #1487.
TracePoint now handles the :class event.

Note that GraalVM 1.0-RC13 implementation of Ruby is built on Ruby 2.4.4, and it is still vulnerable to CVE-2018-16395. This will be fixed in the next release.

Python

New feature:

Allow installation of NumPy in a venv. Just run e.g., bin/graalpython -m venv numpy_env; source numpy_env/bin/activate; graalpython -m ginstall install numpy. Note that not all NumPy features work at the moment.

To see a complete list of changes, please refer to the project changelog.

API Changes for GraalVM Integrators (SDK + Truffle)

Added Debugger.getSessionCount() to return the number of active debugger sessions.
TruffleLanguage class now can register additional services. This change also deprecates the automatic registration of the language class as a service.
OptionCategory.DEBUG has been renamed to OptionCategory.INTERNAL for clarity.
Added static member to class objects that provides access to the class’s static members.
OptionStability has been added for specifying the stability of an option.

All GraalVM SDK and Truffle changes between GraalVM versions are summarized in the project changelogs:

1.0-RC12

(2019-02-04)

Native Image Generation

Native images now check the remaining available stack size on every method call, and throw a StackOverflowError on stack overflows.

We continued the work on the support of incomplete classpaths. There were no big changes, but only small bug fixes based on users feedback. The support for incomplete classpaths now allows to run the native image generator with bytecode verification, i.e., the option --no-verify is no longer passed to the Java HotSpot VM when running the native image generator.

R

An extensive list of changes to GraalVM implementation of R is available on GitHub. Here is a short list of most notable ones:

FastR now uses the R base function print to implement TruffleLanguage#toString, so that tools and debuggers (like the Chrome Dev Tools console) format values (e.g., data.frame objects) in a familiar, R-like, way.
GraalVM implementation of R provides GNU-R compatible parseData for expressions parsed via parse(...,keep.source=T), which enables packages that use this functionality (like lambda.r and plumber) to work.
Added a dummy implementation of the ALTREP framework to avoid linking problems.

JavaScript

Updated Node.js from 10.9.0 to version 10.15.0.
A new option js.experimental-array-prototype added to set prototype of array-like non-JS objects (like ProxyArray or Java List) to Array.prototype. It makes it possible to use functions like map or forEach on these objects directly.

More details can be found in the project changelog on GitHub.

LLVM Runtime

In order to streamline the polyglot APIs in LLVM Runtime, we deprecated the truffle_* builtin functions. We also broke binary compatibility to bitcode compiled with polyglot.h from version 1.0.0-RC2 (or older).
Read-only globals are now placed in read-only memory. This was necessary to accommodate some changes in mac OS Mojave’s libc that raise errors when format strings are placed in the writable memory.

The project changelog is available on GitHub.

Ruby

This version came with the compatibility improvements:

Change to a new system for handling Ruby objects in C extensions which greatly increases compatibility with MRI.
Support for BigDecimal#to_r was implemented (See #1521).

A complete project changelog is available on GitHub.

Python

To see a complete list of changes, please refer to the project changelog.

Added support for the __class__ variable in the class scope.
Initial support of the venv standard-library tool, the built-in _bz2 module and the pandas package was started up.

API Changes for GraalVM Integrators (SDK + Truffle)

GraalVM SDK and Truffle changes between GraalVM versions are summarized in the project changelogs:

Tools

Graal VisualVM

Added the ability to create native image heap dump directly from Graal VisualVM interface.
Improved heap dump support in the native image.

1.0-RC11

(2019-01-14)

Native Image Generation

We improved the handling of incomplete classpaths, i.e., code that references classes that are not provided on the classpath. The approach we took for RC10 caused problems in corner cases that would have been difficult to fix, therefore we implemented a different approach. Thanks to everyone who tried our initial approach and reported problems on GitHub. We attempted to verify that all reported problems are solved with the new approach.

JavaScript

Graal.js only supports ECMAScript 5 (ES5) and newer, and enforces that rule.
Added support for sharing Java objects using the experimental Node.js Worker Threads API.
Added support for ScriptEngine GLOBAL_SCOPE bindings.
Added options to enable/disable several extension features e.g., print() or load().
Added options to disable features for security reasons e.g., eval().

More details can be found in the project changelog on GitHub.

LLVM Runtime

GraalVM now reports source filenames and line numbers for LLVM functions in stack traces if the bitcode is compiled with debug information, even if the original source is not available.

Find a complete changelog on GitHub.

Ruby

A complete project changelog is available on GitHub. Here is a short list of most notable changes:

Allowed signal 0 to be used with Process.kill (see #1474).
Implemented Dir.each_child.
Added missing support for the close_others option to exec and spawn.
Implemented the missing MatchData#named_captures method (see #1512).
Process::CLOCK_ constants have been given the same value as in standard Ruby.
All core files now make use of frozen String literals, reducing the number of String allocations for core methods.

Python

The changelog is available on GitHub.

Added the ginstall custom module to install known packages such as NumPy and setup tools using graalpython -m ginstall.
Added support for the yield from syntax.
Added more built-in methods to the time module.
Added support for the standard zipfile module.
Added the built-in _cvs module.
Various bug fixes and performance improvements.
Removed the exposure of internal languages through polyglot.eval.

R

The R version was upgraded to R-3.5.1.
R does not print or log any details for internal errors unless it is run with --jvm.DR:+PrintErrorStacktracesToFile.
Newly implemented R native API functions: Rf_duplicated, Rf_setVar, norm_rand, exp_rand.
Numerous bug fixes.

More details can be found in the project changelog on GitHub.

API Changes for GraalVM Integrators (SDK + Truffle)

Please refer to the project changelogs for a list of APIs changes:

Tools

Graal VisualVM

Added CPU monitoring of native-image processes.
Improved the search feature in text views - thread dumps, OQL console results, etc..
Heap viewer is now displaying JVM arguments, has improved performance and memory management.

1.0-RC10

(2018-12-05)

Bug fixes and performance improvements across all GraalVM components.

Native Image Generation

Added a new option --allow-incomplete-classpath with GraalVM 1.0-rc10. By default (without specifying this option), classes that are reachable, but missing on the class path, are reported at native image generation time. When specifying this new option, missing classes are only reported at run time. The option provides support for, e.g., libraries that probe the existence of classes, catch the class loading error, and then fall back to a different behavior. This should result in more applications being able to compile to a GraalVM native image.

JavaScript

The project changelog is available on GitHub.

Added the ability to construct the Java classpath programmatically. If you know at runtime where the classes and jar files are located – you can add them to the classpath and use Java code from them.
Compatibility: added support for several proposals which might become parts of ECMAScript 2019: Array.prototype.{flat,flatMap}, well-formed JSON.stringify, globalThis.
Compatibility: moved several non-standard builtins behind flags (see the changelog).

LLVM Runtime

Improved the debugging experience: internal functions (originating from the GraalVM LLVM interpreter implementation) are now hidden in the stack traces by default and can be debugged with --inspect.Internal; and unhandled exceptions are now output to stderr instead of stdout.

More details can be found in the project changelog on GitHub.

Ruby

GraalVM 1.0-rc10 implementation of Ruby comes with several new features and multiple bug fixes which can be found in the project changelog on GitHub.

Compatibility: implemented the following API and added libraries:
- The nkf and kconv standard libraries were added.
- Queue and SizedQueue, #close and #closed?, have been implemented.
- Kernel#clone(freeze) has been implemented.
- Warning.warn has been implemented.
- Thread.report_on_exception has been implemented.
Compatibility: ArgumentError messages now better match MRI.

Python

Several users-facing improvements were made to the embedding interfaces: getting/setting the current working directory in Python now uses the appropriate Truffle APIs, Python will report side effects in the KEY_INFO message, and the KEYS message now responds with attributes and methods (not with dict keys).
The interactive help() builtin now works, including asking about language and syntax.

A complete project changelog is available on GitHub.

R

Made important steps for compatibility with the R ecosystem:

Improved the support for popular packages: Rcpp modules, dplyr now mostly works, and FastR provides its own version of data.table (work in progress).
A new builtin function install.fastr.packages(pkgs) can be used to install FastR-specific versions of the rJava and data.table packages.
Fixed linking problems on MacOS when installing R packages and using Fortran code.

The full changelog is available on GitHub.

API Changes for GraalVM Integrators (SDK + Truffle)

To see the list of changes to the APIs please refer to the project changelogs:

Tools

Graal VisualVM

Several quality of life improvements:

Added the display of system properties for SVM heap dumps.
Added support for the fields histogram and merged references for guest languages: JavaScript, Ruby, and so on.
Improved CPU Sampler accuracy.

Ideal Graph Visualizer

The tool understands mx project structure now, e.g., the GraalVM compiler project when opening sources.
Improved performance when laying out large graphs.

1.0-RC9

(2018-11-05)

GraalVM for Java Developers (GraalVM + compiler)

Updated based JDK to 8u192. You can find the JDK release notes at the Oracle Technology Network website.

Ruby

GraalVM 1.0-rc9 implementation of Ruby features security updates and multiple bug fixes which can be found in the project changelog on GitHub. Here is a short list of most notable changes:

LLVM for Oracle Linux 7 can now be installed without building from source.
The supported version of LLVM for Oracle Linux has been updated from 3.8 to 4.0.
mysql2 is now patched to avoid a bug in passing NULL to rb_scan_args, and now passes the majority of its test suite.
The post-install script now automatically detects if recompiling the OpenSSL C extension is needed. The post-install script should always be run in TravisCI as well, see the documentation.
Detect when the system libssl is incompatible more accurately and add instructions on how to recompile the extension.

Python

Added the support help in the builtin Python shell.
Added readline to enable history and autocompletion in the Python shell.
Add support for the -q, -E, -s, and -S Python launcher flags.
Improved support for string and bytes regular expressions using our TRegex engine.
Started the initial support for the binascii module.

A complete project changelog is available on GitHub.

R

Various improvements in handling of foreign objects in R.
Added missing R builtins and C API: eapply builtin and rapply builtin.

More details can be found in the project changelog on GitHub.

JavaScript

A complete changelog is available on GitHub.

LLVM Runtime

The project changelog is available on GitHub.

API Changes for GraalVM Integrators (SDK + Truffle)

Added SourceElement.ROOT and StepConfig.suspendAnchors() to tune debugger stepping.
Added Context.Builder.logHandler and Engine.Builder.logHandler methods to install a logging handler writing into a given OutputStream.
Primitives, host and Proxy values can now be shared between multiple context and engine instances. They no longer throw an IllegalArgumentException when shared.

The major GraalVM SDK and Truffle changes between GraalVM versions are summarized in the project changelogs:

Tools

Graal VisualVM

Improved Python heapwalker by fixing class names and adding support for PString.
Fixed handling Page Up/Down in ProfilerTreeTable. See GH-109 for details.

1.0-RC8

(2018-10-19)

GraalVM for Java Developers (GraalVM + compiler)

Added the support for Intel bit manipulation instructions. For more details, see #666.
Virtualize unsafe compare and swap calls on non-escaping objects. See #636.

Maven Artifacts

The com.oracle.truffle group ID was renamed to org.graalvm.truffle.
The graal-sdk, launcher-common and polyglot-tck artifacts were moved from the org.graalvm group ID to org.graalvm.sdk.
New artifacts that are now available:
- org.graalvm.compiler:compiler
- org.graalvm.js:js
- org.graalvm.js:js-launcher
- org.graalvm.js:js-scriptengine
- org.graalvm.regex:regex
- org.graalvm.tools:chromeinspector
- org.graalvm.tools:profiler
- org.graalvm.truffle:truffle-nfi
- com.oracle.substratevm:library-support
- com.oracle.substratevm:objectfile
- com.oracle.substratevm:pointsto
- com.oracle.substratevm:svm-driver
- com.oracle.substratevm:svm
The artifacts that are now modular JARs:
- truffle-api
- graal-sdk
- js
- js-scriptengine
- compiler
The compiler artifact provides the jdk.internal.vm.compiler module and can be used to upgrade that module in JDK 11. Unlike the module present in the JDK, this version contains the optimizing Truffle runtime.

Native Image Generation

The native image generator now has automatic support for services loaded using ServiceLoader. All service implementation classes, listed in the META-INF directory, are available automatically as soon as the service interface is used. This eliminates the need to manually register resources and reflection support for such classes. The automatic registration can be disabled with the -H:-UseServiceLoaderFeature option.
Finished the support for isolates (starting multiple independent VM instances at run time) and compressed references (to reduce memory footprint; Enterprise Edition only). More details are in an upcoming blog article.
A new Maven plugin allows native image generation from within a Maven build.

All components necessary for native image generation (Substrate VM and the GraalVM compiler) are now available on Maven Central. The dependency for that is:

  <dependency>
    <groupId>com.oracle.substratevm</groupId>
    <artifactId>svm</artifactId>
    <version>1.0.0-rc8</version>
    <scope>provided</scope>
  </dependency>

JavaScript

Updated Node.js to version 10.9.0.

A complete changelog is available on GitHub.

LLVM Runtime

The project changelog is available on GitHub.

Ruby

Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, Fedora 28, and macOS 10.14 (Mojave) now supported.
Java.synchronized(object) { } and TruffleRuby.synchronized(object) { } methods have been added.
Added a TruffleRuby::AtomicReference class.
Performance of setting the last exception on a thread has now been improved.

A complete project changelog is available on GitHub.

Python

Python now supports the allocation profiler (--memtracer) to analyze the heap usage of applications.

The changelog is available on GitHub.

R

GraalVM 1.0-rc8 implementation of R came up with multiple bug fixes which can be found in the project changelog on GitHub.

Tools

Graal VisualVM

Introduced the CPU and Memory Sampler for guest languages.
Submitted improvements in the R language heapwalker.

API Changes for GraalVM Integrators (SDK + Truffle)

The major GraalVM SDK and Truffle changes between GraalVM versions are summarized in the project changelogs:

1.0-RC7

(2018-10-03)

GraalVM for Java Developers (GraalVM + compiler)

Added the virtualization of Unsafe compare and swap calls, for more details see GH-636.

Native Image Generation

Support for the Java security framework, see JCA-SECURITY-SERVICES.md for the details.
Support for https URL connections, see URL-PROTOCOLS.md for more details.

JavaScript

Improved support for sharing of shapes between Contexts with the same Engine, which allows to reuse ASTs and objects across different manually created contexts.
Support for BigInteger typed TypedArrays.

More details can be found in the project changelog on GitHub.

LLVM Runtime

The full changelog is available on GitHub.

New polyglot builtin polyglot_has_member.
Removed support for implicit polyglot types for local variables as the availability of type information is not guaranteed. Explicit polyglot casts are now strictly required (polyglot_as_typed). See theInteroperability guide for more details.
Support for IR-level (textual representation of bitcode files) tracing, i.e., creating an execution log of all bitcodes that were executed, for debugging purposes.
Preliminary support for LLVM 7.

Ruby

The complete changelog is available on GitHub. Here is a short list of most notable changes.

Useful inspect strings have been added for more foreign objects.
Added the rbconfig/sizeof native extension for better MRI compatibility.
Support for pg 1.1. The extension now compiles successfully, but may still have issues with some datatypes.
readline can now be interrupted by the interrupt signal (Ctrl+C). This fixes Ctrl+C to work in IRB.
Fixed version check preventing TruffleRuby from working with Bundler 2.0 and later.
Removed obsoleted patches for Bundler compatibility now that Bundler 1.16.5 has built-in support for TruffleRuby.
Fixed problem with Kernel.public_send not tracking its caller properly rb_thread_call_without_gvl() no longer holds the C-extensions lock.
Fixed caller_locations when called inside method_added.
Fixed mon_initialize when called inside initialize_copy.

Python

Added support for the re.split builtin.
Enhanced the java interop builtin module with introspection utility methods.
Changes in C extension interface to reduce overhead.

The changelog is available on GitHub.

R

AWT based graphics devices (jpg, png, X11, …) is supported when running FastR as a native image.
eval.polyglot: the parameter source was renamed to code.
New builtin as.data.frame.polyglot.value creates R data frames from Polyglot objects (KEYS are used as column names, the values must be homogenous arrays, e.g., respond to HAS_SIZE).
Paths in eval.polyglot are resolved relative to the current working directory.
Various fixes necessary to pass dplyr tests (GitHub version of dplyr).

More details can be found in the project changelog on GitHub.

Tools

Ideal Graph Visualizer

User can navigate to Javascript (guest language) source from the graph nodes.
Ideal Graph Visualizer prompts to download plugins to support Javascript editing.
Simple scripts (written in Javascript) can be applied on graph data.

API Changes for GraalVM Integrators (SDK + Truffle)

GraalVM SDK and Truffle license changes from GPL2 with Class Path Exception to the Universal Permissive License (UPL). Please refer to the license files for more information: GraalVM Truffle license, GraalVM SDK license.

To see the list of changes to the APIs, please refer to the project changelogs:

1.0-RC6

(2018-08-31)

GraalVM for Java Developers (GraalVM + compiler)

New optimization to remove unnecessary allocation in some calls to Enum.values(). See calls to Enum.values() don’t optimise away as expected for the details.

Native Image Generation

Delay class initialization to runtime: By default, all classes that are seen as reachable for a native image are initialized during image building, i.e., the class initialization method is executed during image building and is not seen as a reachable method at runtime. But for some classes, it is necessary to execute the class initialization method at runtime. This is now possible using the new option --delay-class-initialization-to-runtime=<comma separate list of class names> or using the new API RuntimeClassInitialization class.
Direct byte buffer are no longer allowed in the image heap: We added a new verification during image generation to ensure that no direct or mapped byte buffers (MappedByteBuffer instances) are in the image heap. Such buffers have either a pointer to C memory or reference a file descriptor, i.e., native resources that are available during image generation but no longer at image runtime. Using such a buffer would lead to a segfault at runtime. We discovered this issue because Netty has a few direct buffers that are created in class initializers. It is necessary to delay the initialization of such classes to runtime.
Better automatic discovery of classes, methods, and fields accessed via reflection. When String parameters of Class.forName, Class.getMethod, Class.getField, and other similar classes can be constant folded during image generation, then these classes, methods, and fields are automatically registered for reflection usage and do not need to be registered manually on the command line. Constant String parameters are a common pattern to support, e.g., different JDK versions or different library versions where a class, method, or field is not present in all cases and therefore cannot be used directly.

LLVM Runtime

The full changelog is available on GitHub.

Support for LLVM IR-level debugging, i.e., debugging at the level of *.ll instead of *.c files.
New polyglot cast functions for primitive array types, which allows object from other languages to be used like primitive arrays.
Support for function pointer members in polyglot_as_typed, which allows objects from other languages to be used in expressions like obj->func(args).

Ruby

The complete changelog is available on GitHub. Here is a short list of most notable changes.

TruffleRuby is now usable as a JSR 223 (javax.script) language;
A migration guide from JRuby is now included.
The embedded configuration -Xembedded can now be set set on the launcher command line.
Polyglot.export can now be used with primitives and converts strings to Java, when Polyglot.import converts them from Java.
Foreign objects optimisations such as unboxing foreign strings on to_s, to_str, and inspect.
Optimized performance and keyword rest arguments (def foo(**kwrest)).
Multiple bug fixes from user reports.

Python

The full changelog is available on GitHub.

Improved compatibility with regular expressions by including CPython’s sre module as a fallback engine (in addition to Truffle’s regular expression engine).
C extension modules can now be compiled with LLVM 5+, which was prevented by internal incompatibilities before.
Introduced lazy string concatenation to significantly speed up code patterns that repeatedly concatenated strings.
Numerous C-API improvements to extend support for scikit-learn.
Extensions and fixes in various areas: behavior of function and code objects, collections, exception handling during import, type ids, documentation and generators.
Update standard library to CPython 3.6.5.
Enable reuse of ASTs in multiple Contexts (requires the contexts to be created in the same polyglot Engine).

R

The full changelog is available on GitHub.

Support for reading/writing graphical parameters via par.
Added numerous builtins to the C API, enabling support for packages like RCurl, rjson, compare, naivebayes, etc.
Added support for formulas that include ....
Various bug fixes: attributes of NULL objects, of CR/LF handling in readLine, La_chol with pivot, warnings/errors in vector coercion.

API Changes for GraalVM Integrators (SDK + Truffle)

To see the list of changes to the APIs please refer to the project changelogs:

1.0-RC5

(2018-07-31)

GraalVM 1.0-rc5 is the first release where we provide pre-built binaries for GraalVM Community on macOS. As always all binaries are available from the downloads page.

KNOWN ISSUES

The GraalVM Community distribution for macOS currently depends on some libraries that are not installed by default on current MacOS versions. This might cause issues with UI-related functionality:
```
Library not loaded: /usr/X11/lib/libfreetype.6.dylib
```
The necessary components can be added, e.g., by installing https://www.xquartz.org. We will remove this dependency in upcoming versions of GraalVM Community for macOS.

GraalVM for Java Developers (GraalVM + compiler)

1.0-RC5 includes JVMCI changes necessary to support compiling the GraalVM compiler ahead of time and deploying as a shared library alongside libjvm.so (i.e., libgraal). Note that the implementation of libgraal itself is not a part of this release as it is still under development.

Native Image Generation

Added API that allows an application to distinguish between native image building, native image runtime, and regular Java execution. For more information and documentation, look at the class ImageInfo.

JavaScript

Removed legacy NashornExtensions option, use --js.nashorn-compat instead.
Added support for Symbol.prototype.description.
Added support for String.prototype.matchAll.

More details can be found in the project changelog on GitHub.

Ruby

The full changelog is available in the GitHub repository, but here are some of the most notable changes.

Simpler installation on macOS: it is no longer needed to add LLVM (/usr/local/opt/llvm@4/bin) to PATH on macOS.
--log.ruby.level= can be used to set the log level from any language launcher.
String#unpack1 has been implemented.
Optimized required and optional keyword arguments.
-Dtruffleruby.log and TRUFFLERUBY_LOG have been removed - use -Dpolyglot.log.ruby.level.
The custom log levels PERFORMANCE and PATCH have been removed.

Python

Generator expressions now properly evaluate their first iterator in the definition scope at definition time.
Fixes for embedders to ensure top scopes are stable and local scopes always contain TruffleObjects.
C-API improvements to support simple Cython modules.
Support recognition of Python source files with the polyglot launcher, so that now --language python is not necessary when starting Python scripts with the polyglot launcher (note that the polyglot launcher still needs to be rebuilt using bin/gu rebuild-images polyglot after installing Python).

Full changelog is available on GitHub CHANGELOG.md.

R

See CHANGELOG for the list of changes.

LLVM Runtime

The project changelog is available on GitHub.

Support the __builtin_debugtrap function based on LLVM’s @llvmn.debugtrap intrinsic, which can be used to drop into the debugger (e.g., Chrome Inspector).
Support “zero-length array at end of struct” pattern when accessing polyglot values as structs.
Improved performance of global variable access.
Improved support for vectorized bitcode operations generated by clang.

API Changes for GraalVM Integrators (SDK + Truffle)

Added new execution listener API that allows for simple, efficient and fine-grained introspection of executed code.
Changed the default language context policy from SHARED to EXCLUSIVE, i.e. by default there is one exclusive language instance per polyglot or inner context. This can be configured by the language using the context policy.

To see the full list of changes to the APIs please refer to the project changelogs:

Tools

Graal VisualVM

Graal VisualVM was added to the GraalVM Community distribution.

1.0-RC4

(2018-07-13)

General Remarks

While we provide updated components for all languages for this rc4 release, only the JavaScript component received fixes from its upstream repository. All other languages are unchanged in terms of functionality.

The next release, rc5, is planned for the beginning of August and will provide updates for all components.

JavaScript

The GraalVM JavaScript component has been updated to provide better compatibility with the Nashorn engine. There now is a --nashorn-compat flag to enable backwards compatibility functionality. This flag is highly discouraged for new applications, but can simplify the migration from Nashorn to GraalVM for existing code.

Access getters and setters like fields
Provide Java.extend, Java.super, JavaImporter, JSAdapter
Allow to construct Interfaces or AbstractClasses
Provide top-level package globals java, javafx, javax, com, org, edu
Provide Java.isScriptFunction, Java.isScriptObject, Java.isJavaMethod and Java.isJavaFunction

Some global functions and objects have been added for the scripting mode and can be enabled with the --scripting flag:

Provide $EXEC, $ENV, $ARG, $OPTIONS

1.0-RC3

(2018-06-29)

GraalVM for Java Developers (GraalVM + compiler)

Updated the underlying JDK version to “1.8.0_172” from “1.8.0_171”. You can find the JDK release notes at the Oracle Technology Network website.
Fixed a rare NullPointerException during JVMCI initialization.

Native Image Generation

Added support for java.lang.reflect.Proxy supporting both automatic detection and manual configuration. Please refer to the documentation for the details.
Added support for Classloader.getResource() and similar methods.
Added support for loading services through theServiceLoader.
Fixed a ClassCastException on generating native images for profile-guided-optimizations (with the --pgo-instrument command line option).

JavaScript

Enabled code sharing between Contexts with the same Engine.
Added support for BigInt arithmetic expressions.
Added a flag for the Nashorn compatibility mode --js.nashorn-compat, for the details and migration from Nashorn please refer to the documentation.
Rename the flag for the V8 compatibility mode to js.v8-compat.

More details can be found in the project changelog on GitHub.

Ruby

The full changelog is available in the GitHub repository, but here are some of the most notable changes.

Added ability to call is_a? on foreign objects.
Fixed: Qnil/Qtrue/Qfalse/Qundef can now be used as initial value for global variables in C extensions.
Fixed: SIGPIPE is correctly caught on SubstrateVM, and the corresponding write() raises Errno::EPIPE when the read end of a pipe or socket is closed.
Fixed determining the source encoding for eval() based on the magic encoding comment.

Additionally, we implemented a number of performance improvements for stat() related calls, eval(), String substitutions, reading from IO and more.

Python

GraalVM Python implementation is still in the early stages, but we’re making progress towards the goal of running applications which use SciPy.

Various C-API improvements allow to run simple NumPy examples.
Implemented buffered I/O and more encodings support, which enables working with files through the standard open function without having to force unbuffered access, and enables working with files that have encodings other than utf-8.
Most math module functions are now implemented and work correctly.
The random module substitute was removed and we now run the standard library random module to be fully compatible.
Improved thread-safety in the embedded scenarios when using Python contexts from multiple threads.

More details are available in the project’s changelog on GitHub.

R

Added more missing R builtins and C API functions, see CHANGELOG for a complete list.
Simplified installation, the script that configures FastR for the current system jre/languages/R/bin/configure_fastr does not require Autotools anymore.
Added configuration files to allow users to build a native image of the FastR runtime, which reduces the startup time. Run jre/languages/R/bin/install_r_native_image to build the image.
Fixed an issue with the plotting window not displaying anything after it was closed and reopened.

LLVM Runtime

New builtins polyglot_from_typed and polyglot_as_typed, which can be used to dynamically attach types to polyglot objects.
Implementers of TruffleObject can now respond to the GetDynamicType message to provide a type when an object is accessed from LLVM code.

More details are available in the project changelog.

API Changes for GraalVM Integrators (SDK + Truffle)

Added support for logging in Truffle languages and instruments.
Removed deprecated ResultVerifier.getDefaultResultVerifier API.

To see the list of changes to the APIs please refer to the project changelogs:

Tools

Graal VisualVM

We improved memory footprint and introduced several UI improvements for cleaner more responsive experience of Graal VisualVM. In addition to that, there are the following improvements:

Added recognition of the LLVM Runtime processes.
Improved displaying logical values of guest languages’ objects.
Improved the Object Query Language (OQL) Console for inspecting memory dumps functionality — sorting, filtering, aggregation, unlimited number of results now work.

Chrome inspector

Multiple inspector sessions for multiple polyglot engines can run on the same port now.

1.0-RC2

(2018-06-05)

GraalVM for Java Developers

Updated the underlying JDK version to “1.8.0_171” from “1.8.0_161”. You can find the JDK release notes at the Oracle Technology Network website.
Improved support for the Java Microbenchmark harness. Since JMH 1.21, GraalVM is a recognized and supported JVM.
Fixed a StackOverflow exception an improved performance when recursively inlining of invokedynamic instructions.
Fixed a compiler error causing incorrect code generation while building the scalac compiler.

Native Image Generation

Added support for building statically linked native images. Now you can pass --static, and if you have static libc and zlib installed, it generates a standalone executable that will not require libc for running.
Added Classpath exception to the license of SubstrateVM and the Graal compiler components to make sure all GraalVM code ending up in a native image is subject to this clause.
Fixed the handling of implicit exceptions (NullPointerExeption, ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException, ClassCastException, …): all exceptions now have correct stack traces and can be caught as expected. Previously, implicit exceptions were sometimes not caught by an exception handler within the same method.
Fixed a number of exceptions during the generation of native images that were reported by early adopters.

JavaScript

Updated Node.js to 8.11.1 (from 8.9.4), it is not a breaking change, but it brings numerous improvements, including CVE-listed security fixes.

LLVM Runtime

Added a new API for accessing Java types and instantiating foreign objects from LLVM languages.

Now it is possible to easily call Java code from native programs compiled to the LLVM bitcode. The example below shows how you can access Java’s BigInteger long math operations from C.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <polyglot.h>
int main() {
    void *bigInteger = polyglot_java_type("java.math.BigInteger");
    void *(*BigInteger_valueOf)(long) = polyglot_get_member(bigInteger, "valueOf");

    void *bi = BigInteger_valueOf(2);
    void *result = polyglot_invoke(bi, "pow", 256);

    char buffer[100];
    polyglot_as_string(polyglot_invoke(result, "toString"),
                       buffer,
                       sizeof(buffer),
                       "ascii");

    printf("%s\n", buffer);
}

If we compile it to the LLVM bitcode, we can execute it with GraalVM. You can see that it computes the value of2^256 which isn’t that easy to do in C otherwise.

# shelajev at shrimp.local in /tmp
→ clang -c -O1 -emit-llvm -I$JAVA_HOME/jre/languages/llvm big-integer-demo.c

# shelajev at shrimp.local in /tmp
→ lli --jvm big-integer-demo.bc
115792089237316195423570985008687907853269984665640564039457584007913129639936

A more detailed list of changes to the LLVM interpreter can be found in the full changelog.

Ruby

We are now compatible with Ruby 2.4.4.
Java.import name imports Java classes as top-level constants.
Coercion of foreign numbers to Ruby numbers now works.
to_s works on all foreign objects and calls the Java toString.
to_str will try to UNBOX and then re-try to_str, in order to provoke the unboxing of foreign strings.

Much more details can be found in the full changelog.

R

Among the other changes, we improved the stability of GraalVM’s R implementation.

Added a /jre/languages/R/bin/configure_fastr script that allows FastR’s native build scripts to adopt to the current system, which makes installing R packages much more stable.
The fastr_errors.log file was renamed to fastr_errors_pidXYZ.log and is stored in either initial working directory, the user home directory, /tmp, or the FastR home directory (picking the first location that is writeable). Please add it to the bug reports if you submit issues.

Python

Added support for the Python unittest framework.
Python now supports breaking on exceptions and unwinding to stack frames in Chrome inspector.

API Changes for GraalVM Integrators (SDK + Truffle)

Both GraalVM SDK and Truffle are offering API for developers trying to build things on top of GraalVM, language implementations, embedding GraalVM, and so on.

Enabled code sharing between guest language Contexts with the same Engine, speeding up the repeated evaluation of the code.

To see the list of changes to the APIs please refer to the project changelogs:

Tools

VisualVM

Fixed the issues with loading polyglot heap dumps
fixed executing of scripts in R console
improved recognition of R REPL
fixed loop to nodes
fixed memory leak in child nodes
improved appearance on MacOS
Applicability fixes
added roots histogram for class

GraalVM Updater `gu`

The default operation mode changed from “install from local files” to “install from catalog”.
-c option for installing from the catalog, can be omitted (installing from the catalog the default), but specifying -c still works.
Use -F to install from local files, i.e. bin/gu -F /tmp/ruby-installable.jar.

Chrome Inspector

Fixed a number of issues:

fixed the initial suspend of node scripts with no statement on the first line
fixed tooltip issues and representation of the functions
fixed issues with re-connection of Chrome inspector client

GraalVM Release Candidates

1.0-RC16

Java

Native Image

Ruby

JavaScript

R

Python

LLVM Runtime

1.0-RC15

Java

JavaScript

R

New Features

Changes

Bug Fixes

Ruby

Changes

Bug Fixes

Compatibility

Python

Changes

LLVM Interpreter

Native Image

API changes for GraalVM integrators (SDK + Truffle)

Tools

Chrome Inspector

Ideal Graph Visualizer (IGV)

1.0-RC14

Introducing --vm.<option>

Java

libgraal

Default Failure Behavior

Native Images

New Features

Bugfixes

JavaScript

HTML-like Comments

Changes

R

Error Propagation

Experimental Options

Ruby

New Features

Changes

Python

Python 3.7.0

Changes

LLVM Runtime

API Changes for GraalVM Integrators (SDK + Truffle)

New Features

Changes

1.0-RC13

Tools

R

JavaScript

LLVM Runtime

Ruby

Python

API Changes for GraalVM Integrators (SDK + Truffle)

1.0-RC12

Native Image Generation

R

JavaScript

LLVM Runtime

Ruby

Python

API Changes for GraalVM Integrators (SDK + Truffle)

Tools

1.0-RC11

Native Image Generation

JavaScript

LLVM Runtime

Ruby

Python

R

API Changes for GraalVM Integrators (SDK + Truffle)

Tools

1.0-RC10

Native Image Generation

Introducing `--vm.<option>`