SkillsCast

Metascala: a tiny DIY JVM

jvm scala scalax metascala functional-programming

2nd December 2013 in London

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The goal of Metascala is to create a platform to experiment with the JVM: a 3000 line JVM written in Scala is probably much more approachable than the 1,000,000 lines of C/C++ which make up HotSpot, the standard implementation, and more amenable to implementing fun features like continuations, isolates or value classes. The 3000 lines of code gives you:

The bytecode interpreter, together with all the run-time data structures
A stack-machine to SSA register-machine bytecode translator
A custom heap, complete with a stop-the-world, copying garbage collector
Implementations of parts of the JVM's native interface

Although it is far from a complete implementation, Metascala already provides the ability to run untrusted bytecode securely (albeit slowly), since every operation which could potentially cause harm (including memory allocations and CPU usage) is virtualized and can be controlled. Ongoing work includes tightening of the security guarantees, improving compatibility and increasing performance.

Scala e xchange 2013 haoyi li on metascala a tiny diy jvm from Skills Matter.

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