GraalVM is an ecosystem for compiling and running applications written in most modern programming languages and offers the following benefits:
- Performance: GraalVM leverages years of research into compiler technology to give you better peak performance on average than any other JVM.
- Interoperability: Combining programming languages in the same runtime maximizes your resources and increases code efficiency. Use whichever programming language is best fit for purpose, in any combination. Match the correct code to the use case you need.
- Embeddable: The Graal Polyglot SDK removes isolation between programming languages and gives you a next-generation runtime environment where you no longer need to write separate applications to use different languages.
- Ahead-of-time compilation: Ahead-of-time compiled native images improve application start-up time and reduce memory footprint.
- Tooling: GraalVM takes advantage of JVM-based tooling and provides a common set of tools, such as debugging and profiling, that you can use for all your code.
Some components are not part of the GraalVM core distribution and must be downloaded and installed separately. These are GraalVM Native Image, LLVM toolchain, Python, R and Ruby language engines. Installable component packages are provided separately for individual operating systems and architectures.
GraalVM provides a simple installation utility, GraalVM Updater, which allows to download package files, install them to their appropriate locations, and manage. Use
bin/gu --help
for brief help.
Alternatively, you can download a component package from the component catalog. With the already downloaded component JAR file, the component can be installed as
gu -L install component.jar
where -L option, equivalent to --local-file, tells to install from a downloaded component archive.
You can use GraalVM like a Java Development Kit (JDK) in your IDE.