Native Image Committer and Community Meeting 2025-12-18

[wirthi]

List of all past and upcoming meetings: #3933

The meeting after this one is planned for January 29th, 2026. The meeting will typically be on the last Thursday of each month.

New and Noteworthy

• Native Image Layers and Analysis improvements
  [GR-71743] Improve documentation of layered code #12684
  [GR-71437] [GR-71502] Make runtime options layer aware. #12667
  [GR-70083] Refactor open world field handling. #12659
  [GR-71327] Cache SubstrateType name. #12628
  [GR-69497] Allow more @Stable fields to be folded before analysis #12575

• Crema
  [GR-62462] Make enter- and leavestub for interpreter uninterruptible #12706
  [GR-71950] Add better logging of interpreter frames during crash #12690
  [GR-70676] NI-based libjvm shared library. #12689
  [GR-71495] Ristretto add basic support for branch profiles. #12679
  [GR-71886] Partial implementation of CremaPartialType.sameRuntimePackage #12675
  [GR-71809] [GR-71785] Fix crema vtable build and +VerifyHeap. #12651
  [GR-70638] Add crema benchmark configuration. #12645
  [GR-71258] Dispatch to JIT compiled methods from crema stubs. #12635
  [GR-71647] [GR-71648] Crema: fix invocation and reflection issues. #12605
  [GR-70601] [GR-70592] [GR-70593] [GR-70598] [GR-71096] Ristretto: Experimental JIT support for Crema. #12602
  [GR-71259] Properly dispatch virtual call-sites via reflection in Crema #12597

• Project Terminus: Self-hosting Native Image #12236
  [GR-57939] Introduce Espresso external JVMCI and VMAccess. #12571
  [GR-71715] Adopt addition of ConstantReflectionProvider.makeIdentityHashCode #12673
  [GR-71695] Make interfaces in VMACCESS trusted in VerifyUsageWithEquals #12638
  [GR-52365] Adopt addition of ConstantReflectionProvider.identityHashCode #12631
  [GR-71633] Avoid TypeNotFoundError in FeatureAccessImpl#findTypeByName #12608
  Migration to JVMCI
  [GR-71688] Use VMAccess in Standalone Points-to Analysis #12626
  [GR-71664] Move ResolvedJavaModule/ModuleLayer/Package to vmaccess #12618
  [GR-66433] Reduce core reflection usage in SVM. #12600
  [GR-71634] Migrate more Native Image code to JVMCI Reflection #12613
  [GR-71304] Add guarantee to mark runtime-only code in SVM #12593
  [GR-71185] Migrate JNIRegistrationUtil to JVMCI reflection #12663
  [GR-71201] Make JavaNetHttpFeature a User Feature #12598

• Streamline reachability metadata
  [GR-71553] Native Image: ExtendedOpenOption.DIRECT failing with --future-defaults=all #12580

Note: please try (and test) your projects with --future-defaults=all. If need be adjust your framework with the following system properties: org.graalvm.nativeimage.future-defaults.complete-reflection-types,org.graalvm.nativeimage.future-defaults.run-time-initialize-file-system-providers, org.graalvm.nativeimage.future-defaults.run-time-initialize-security-providers.

• Usability
  [GR-71698] Introduce a new --future-defaults value for initializing resource bundles at run time. #12648
  [GR-46870] Fix agent behavior on method handle lookups for overriding methods #12622

• Monitoring / Tooling / Debugging

• Garbage Collector / Memory Management
  [GR-57356] Print more information when heap verifier detects an invalid reference in the stack. #12599
  [GR-71568] Avoid unnecessary safepoint checks in CompactingOldGen. #12587

• Other & fixes
  [GR-57214] Allow "-H:..." for Native Image runtime options. #12642 (!)
  [GR-71705] Disable spotbugs for compiler and substratevm suites #12637 (!)
  [GR-65338] Enable PLT/GOT calls for methods annotated with SubstrateForeignCallTarget #12630
  [GR-65022] Replace HashSets with EconomicSet. #12700
  [GR-71641] Treat null keys/elements in EconomicMap/EconomicSet operations consistently. #12693
  [GR-60169] Add missing sun.io.unicode.encoding system property. #12688
  [GR-71801] Fix the SubstitutionReportFeature #12682
  [GR-36006] Make SubstrateCompilationMXBean#getTotalCompilationTime compatible with JDKs CompilationMXBean implementation. #12681
  [GR-52446] NativeImageResourceFileSystem should throw NPE when URI is null. #12680
  [GR-71331] Allow FFM API without libc. #12661
  [GR-71747] In-place copySwap in JavaMemoryUtil is a no-op. #12632
  [GR-71543] [GR-71604] MemoryAccessProvider fixes and cleanups. #12611
  [GR-71146] Make ParseRuntimeOptions non-experimental and extract separate flag for VM initialization and startup hooks. #12588
  [GR-71261] [GR-71478] Fold reads from stable arrays. #12578

Questions

@wirthi we intend to stop publishing (for future releases) https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.graalvm.nativeimage/svm (which is implementation details), everything relevant for your usecases should be (or needs to be) in in the public API https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.graalvm.sdk/nativeimage - who is still depending on the internals? Is anything missing in the API that is blocking you from moving? See #12738

Deep Dive: Vojin on upcoming changes in the Metadata Repository