JVM Language Summit 2018 and Valhalla EA Build 0

July 2018 ended with some interesting developments related to the future of Java and the JVM. JVM Language Summit 2018 was held at Oracle's Santa Clara campus on the last two days of the month and Build 0 of the Project Valhalla "L-World Value Types" Early-Access Builds was released on July 30.

JVM Language Summit 2018

Videos of presentations from the JVM Language Summit 2018 are available on YouTube. The easiest way to access these videos is via the JVM Language Summit 2018 Playlist. The recorded presentations include the following:

• LWorld: the next steps on the journey to Valhalla with David Simms and Tobi Ajila
• Below the Fold, Adventures in Constancy with Brian Goetz and Vicente Romero
• How to Design an IDE-Friendly Language with Peter Gromov @donnerpeter
• CONSTANT Dynamic with Dan Heidinga and Paul Sandoz
• Project Loom with Ron Pressler and Alan Bateman
• Graal Without Truffle with Charles Nutter
• Just a Small Class File Change: Nestmates: A Case Study with Karen Kinnear
• Cross Run Considerations with Gil Tene
• Java Vector API with Sandhya Viswanathan and Vladimir Ivanov
• Truly Final Fields with Anna Thomas
• Startup Challenges with Claes Redestad
• Going Meta to Valhalla and Panama with John Rose (slides)

Valhalla Early-Access Builds: Build 0

The Project Valhalla page now offers an early access build of the Valhalla Project. This first early access build, Build 0, was posted on July 30. The first three paragraphs of the page with this Build 0 tell us that this build is "aimed at testing a 'Value Types' implementation within the JVM" (L-World Value Types), is "provided as a convenience so that they [expert users interested in Project Valhalla] don't need to build from the source code (branch 'lworld')," and is "based on an incomplete version of JDK 11."

The Build 0 Project Valhalla Early Access Build is available as a gzip-ed TAR file for Linux/x64, Windows/x64, and macOS/x64. Although there is a long list of limitations associated with this Build 0 early-access build, I'm still looking forward to playing with it.