renjin VS JDK

There is the GraalVM Python Runtime, Renjin GCC-Bridge (for C, C++, R)...

I feel like all of this kind of exists but it's quite esoteric "non-standard stuff" and not necessarily something sane people want in production.

https://github.com/bedatadriven/renjin/tree/master/tools/gcc...

https://www.graalvm.org/python/

It'll help build cross-platform desktop applications. In theory, it'll mean hooking the build process up to a GitHub action to build platform-specific binaries, such as my FOSS KeenWrite Markdown editor[0], without having to have a copy of every operating system.

To my knowledge, cross-compiling "native" Linux and Windows binaries using Java requires duct tape, chewing gum, and warp-packer.[1]

GraalVM isn't a panacea, though.[2] For example, GraalVM cannot compile Renjin, a pure Java R interpreter, so you have to switch from Renjin to FastR. Switching isn't trivial.

[0]: https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite

[1]: https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2020/06/29/write-once-build-an...

[2]: https://github.com/bedatadriven/renjin/issues/564

I just wanted to mention that C compilers exist for the JVM.

I felt out of the loop, thinking that Zero VM was some kind of new distro for OpenJDK but chasing <https://packages.debian.org/sid/openjdk-22-jre-zero#:~:text=...> to <https://sources.debian.org/src/openjdk-11/11.0.23%2B9-1/debi...> lead me to https://github.com/openjdk/jdk/tree/jdk-22-ga/src/hotspot/cp...

It seems that it's a specific CPU target for the Hotspot JIT for non-mainstream architectures (or for research purposes, as I saw mentioned once)

Completely gutted from the OpenJDK, last I checked. See here for the culprit PR: https://github.com/openjdk/jdk/pull/18688

> Yes, they're changing one aspect of signal handler use to work around this problem. They're not stopping the use of signal handlers in general. Hotspot continues to use signals for efficiency in general. See https://github.com/openjdk/jdk/blob/9059727df135dc90311bd476...

This whole thread is about SIGSEGV, and specifically their SIGSEGV handling. However, catching normal signals is not about efficiency.

Some of their exception handling is still odd: There is no reason for a program that receives SIGILL to ever attempt continuing. But others is fine, like catching SIGFPE to just forward an exception to the calling code.

(Sure, you could construct an argument to say that this is for efficiency if you considered the alternative to be implementing floating point in software so that all exceptions exist in user-space, but hardware floating point is the norm and such alternative would be wholly unreasonable.)

> The wonderful thing about choosing not to care about facts is having whatever opinions you want.

I appreciate the irony of you making such statement, proudly thinking that your opinion equals fact, and therefore any other opinion is not.

This discussion is nothing but subjective opinion vs. subjective opinion. Facts are (hopefully, as I can only speak for myself) inputs to both our opinions, but no opinion about "good" or "bad", "nasty" or not can ever be objective. Objective code quality does not exist.

I remember talking to Brendan about the PreserveFramePointer patch during my first months at Netflix in 2015. As of JDK 21, unfortunately it is no longer a general purpose solution for the JVM, because it prevents a fast path being taken for stack thawing for virtual threads: https://github.com/openjdk/jdk/blob/d32ce65781c1d7815a69ceac...