The vm suite is used to build the GraalVM in a modular way. It can create the GraalVM distribution as well as installable components.
This suite defines a bare-bones GraalVM that contains the JVMCI-enabled JDK, the Graal SDK and Truffle.
More components are added by importing extra suites.
This can be done using mx's --dynamicimports/--dy flag.
For example building the typical GraalVM base one can do:
$ mx --dy /substratevm,/tools,sulong,/graal-nodejs build
This will include:
- SubstrateVM (with the
native-imagetool) - Graal compiler & the Truffle-Graal accelerator (imported as a dependency of
substratevm) - The inspector and profiler tools
- Sulong
- Graal.nodejs
- Graal.js (imported as a dependency of
graal-nodejs) - libpolyglot
Installable components can be installed in a "base" GraalVM with the gu command.
They get created alongside the GraalVM for languages other than JS.
For example, it is also possible to run:
$ mx --dy fastr,truffleruby,graalpython,/substratevm build
To create installable components for FastR, TruffleRuby and Graal.python.
Note that if substratevm is included, native launchers will be created otherwise, bash launchers will be used.
If substratevm is included, the polyglot launcher will also be built as well as libpolyglot.
Dynamic imports typically require the user to locate and clone the dynamically imported suites.
There is also no indication of which version of those suites would work.
To avoid this issue, the vm suite uses "versioned dynamic imports".
The mx.vm/suite.py file contains references to all the suites that might be imported to compose a GraalVM.
Unlike usual suite imports, they are marked as dyanmic, which means they are only considered if they are part of the dynamically imported suites.
However, when they are included, they have URLs and versions which allow mx to automatically clone the correct version.
More details can be found in docs/dynamic-imports.md in the mx repository.
Suites can provide components using mx_sdk.register_graalvm_component.