Da Vinci Machine - History

History

The Java Virtual Machine currently has no built-in support for dynamically typed languages:

  • The existing JVM instruction set is statically typed.
  • JVM has limited support for dynamically modifying existing classes and methods. It currently works only in a debugging environment.

JSR 292 (Supporting Dynamically Typed Languages on the Java Platform) proposes to:

  • add a new invokedynamic instruction at the JVM level, to allow method invocation relying on dynamic type checking,
  • to be able to change classes and methods at runtime dynamically in a production environment.

Following the success of the JRuby Java implementation, the Da Vinci project was started at the end of January 2008. The capabilities experimented by Da Vinci are planned to be added to Java 7. It aims to prototype this JSR, but also other lower-priority extensions. The first working prototype, developed as a patch on OpenJDK, was announced and made available on end of August 2008.

Since then, the JRuby team has successfully wired dynamic invocation in their codebase. Dynamic invocation shipped with the 1.1.5 release, and will be disabled on JVMs without invokedynamic capabilities.

Since then, part of the project has already been integrated in the upcoming JDK 7 codebase. and integrated in the Java 7 release.

Read more about this topic:  Da Vinci Machine

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    “As I am, so shall I associate, and so shall I act; Caesar’s history will paint out Caesar.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    “To a surprising extent the war-lords in shining armour, the apostles of the martial virtues, tend not to die fighting when the time comes. History is full of ignominious getaways by the great and famous.”
    —George Orwell (1903–1950)

    “I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a “will to renewal.” This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of “crises”Mof rupture, repudiation and resistance.... When there is no “crisis,” there is stagnation, petrification and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.”
    —Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)