Anyone tried running kotlin on the GraalVM? Any ex...

# random

[hallvard]

Anyone tried running kotlin on the GraalVM? Any experiences to share?

[gildor]

You can do that, but without kotlin-reflect

[hallvard]

Any notes on performance?

[gildor]

Actually, even official repo with samples contains AOT sample for Kotlin
https://github.com/graalvm/graalvm-demos/tree/master/java-kotlin-aot

[gildor]

I suppose same as Java

[gildor]

Are you talking about AOT or VM usage?

[hallvard]

oooh! There even was a demo! I never read the full thing. Should have.

[hallvard]

I was thinking about general vm usage. But I'll look into the example (and some of my own projects) and see for myself. Thanks.

[gildor]

Some tests of Java with graal as VM that I saw show plus/minus same performance as OpenJDK 8, I suppose the same for Kotlin

[kenkyee]

Main benefit would be for serverless:
https://medium.com/graalvm/instant-netty-startup-using-graalvm-native-image-generation-ed6f14ff7692

[gildor]

This is AOT case, not VM

[hallvard]

I came to wonder about graal when I read this: https://blog.playframework.com/play-on-graal/. Apparently, the GraalVM is better at «escape analysis», a notion I hadn't met before. Would such escape analysis in the graalvm be an advantage for kotlin programs too? Or maybe not? Or worse: is there some magic in the kotlin generated bytecode that would perform worse in the GraalVM?

[gildor]

Kotlin generated bytecode is pretty similar to java, and it’s just byte code after all

[gildor]

It should work for Kotlin too

[gildor]

but to be honest, we should see some significant performance gain on Java at least

[hallvard]

Worth a shot then ... Will see when someone gets around to just doing some tests and posting the results.

[gildor]

My last comment was not exactly correct. I meant that I don’t see significant performance gain on Java in case of VM at least for some simple cases, probably make sense for a big high load service (Twitter uses Graal on production), so doesn’t look really interesting to use with Kotlin now for me
Also, looks that Java 9 and 10 are faster in some basic tests (Graal is Java 8 compatible)