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Introducing GraalVM Native Images

GraalVM Native Images provide a new way to deploy and run Java applications. Compared to the Java Virtual Machine, native images can run with a smaller memory footprint and with much faster startup times.

They are well suited to applications that are deployed using container images and are especially interesting when combined with "Function as a service" (FaaS) platforms.

Unlike traditional applications written for the JVM, GraalVM Native Image applications require ahead-of-time processing in order to create an executable. This ahead-of-time processing involves statically analyzing your application code from its main entry point.

A GraalVM Native Image is a complete, platform-specific executable. You do not need to ship a Java Virtual Machine in order to run a native image.

If you just want to get started and experiment with GraalVM you can jump to the Developing Your First GraalVM Native Application section and return to this section later.

Key Differences with JVM Deployments

The fact that GraalVM Native Images are produced ahead-of-time means that there are some key differences between native and JVM based applications. The main differences are:

  • Static analysis of your application is performed at build-time from the main entry point.

  • Code that cannot be reached when the native image is created will be removed and won’t be part of the executable.

  • GraalVM is not directly aware of dynamic elements of your code and must be told about reflection, resources, serialization, and dynamic proxies.

  • The application classpath is fixed at build time and cannot change.

  • There is no lazy class loading, everything shipped in the executables will be loaded in memory on startup.

  • There are some limitations around some aspects of Java applications that are not fully supported.

On top of those differences, Spring uses a process called Spring Ahead-of-Time processing, which imposes further limitations. Please make sure to read at least the beginning of the next section to learn about those.

The Native Image Compatibility Guide section of the GraalVM reference documentation provides more details about GraalVM limitations.

Understanding Spring Ahead-of-Time Processing

Typical Spring Boot applications are quite dynamic and configuration is performed at runtime. In fact, the concept of Spring Boot auto-configuration depends heavily on reacting to the state of the runtime in order to configure things correctly.

Although it would be possible to tell GraalVM about these dynamic aspects of the application, doing so would undo most of the benefit of static analysis. So instead, when using Spring Boot to create native images, a closed-world is assumed and the dynamic aspects of the application are restricted.

A closed-world assumption implies, besides the limitations created by GraalVM itself, the following restrictions:

  • The beans defined in your application cannot change at runtime, meaning:

When these restrictions are in place, it becomes possible for Spring to perform ahead-of-time processing during build-time and generate additional assets that GraalVM can use. A Spring AOT processed application will typically generate:

  • Java source code

  • Bytecode (for dynamic proxies etc)

  • GraalVM JSON hint files in META-INF/native-image/{groupId}/{artifactId}/:

    • Resource hints (resource-config.json)

    • Reflection hints (reflect-config.json)

    • Serialization hints (serialization-config.json)

    • Java Proxy Hints (proxy-config.json)

    • JNI Hints (jni-config.json)

If the generated hints are not sufficient, you can also provide your own.

Source Code Generation

Spring applications are composed of Spring Beans. Internally, Spring Framework uses two distinct concepts to manage beans. There are bean instances, which are the actual instances that have been created and can be injected into other beans. There are also bean definitions which are used to define attributes of a bean and how its instance should be created.

If we take a typical @Configuration class:

import org.springframework.context.annotation.Bean;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;

@Configuration(proxyBeanMethods = false)
public class MyConfiguration {

	@Bean
	public MyBean myBean() {
		return new MyBean();
	}

}

The bean definition is created by parsing the @Configuration class and finding the @Bean methods. In the above example, we’re defining a BeanDefinition for a singleton bean named myBean. We’re also creating a BeanDefinition for the MyConfiguration class itself.

When the myBean instance is required, Spring knows that it must invoke the myBean() method and use the result. When running on the JVM, @Configuration class parsing happens when your application starts and @Bean methods are invoked using reflection.

When creating a native image, Spring operates in a different way. Rather than parsing @Configuration classes and generating bean definitions at runtime, it does it at build-time. Once the bean definitions have been discovered, they are processed and converted into source code that can be analyzed by the GraalVM compiler.

The Spring AOT process would convert the configuration class above to code like this:

import org.springframework.beans.factory.aot.BeanInstanceSupplier;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.config.BeanDefinition;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.support.RootBeanDefinition;

/**
 * Bean definitions for {@link MyConfiguration}.
 */
public class MyConfiguration__BeanDefinitions {

	/**
	 * Get the bean definition for 'myConfiguration'.
	 */
	public static BeanDefinition getMyConfigurationBeanDefinition() {
		Class<?> beanType = MyConfiguration.class;
		RootBeanDefinition beanDefinition = new RootBeanDefinition(beanType);
		beanDefinition.setInstanceSupplier(MyConfiguration::new);
		return beanDefinition;
	}

	/**
	 * Get the bean instance supplier for 'myBean'.
	 */
	private static BeanInstanceSupplier<MyBean> getMyBeanInstanceSupplier() {
		return BeanInstanceSupplier.<MyBean>forFactoryMethod(MyConfiguration.class, "myBean")
			.withGenerator((registeredBean) -> registeredBean.getBeanFactory().getBean(MyConfiguration.class).myBean());
	}

	/**
	 * Get the bean definition for 'myBean'.
	 */
	public static BeanDefinition getMyBeanBeanDefinition() {
		Class<?> beanType = MyBean.class;
		RootBeanDefinition beanDefinition = new RootBeanDefinition(beanType);
		beanDefinition.setInstanceSupplier(getMyBeanInstanceSupplier());
		return beanDefinition;
	}

}
The exact code generated may differ depending on the nature of your bean definitions.

You can see above that the generated code creates equivalent bean definitions to the @Configuration class, but in a direct way that can be understood by GraalVM.

There is a bean definition for the myConfiguration bean, and one for myBean. When a myBean instance is required, a BeanInstanceSupplier is called. This supplier will invoke the myBean() method on the myConfiguration bean.

During Spring AOT processing, your application is started up to the point that bean definitions are available. Bean instances are not created during the AOT processing phase.

Spring AOT will generate code like this for all your bean definitions. It will also generate code when bean post-processing is required (for example, to call @Autowired methods). An ApplicationContextInitializer will also be generated which will be used by Spring Boot to initialize the ApplicationContext when an AOT processed application is actually run.

Although AOT generated source code can be verbose, it is quite readable and can be helpful when debugging an application. Generated source files can be found in target/spring-aot/main/sources when using Maven and build/generated/aotSources with Gradle.

Hint File Generation

In addition to generating source files, the Spring AOT engine will also generate hint files that are used by GraalVM. Hint files contain JSON data that describes how GraalVM should deal with things that it can’t understand by directly inspecting the code.

For example, you might be using a Spring annotation on a private method. Spring will need to use reflection in order to invoke private methods, even on GraalVM. When such situations arise, Spring can write a reflection hint so that GraalVM knows that even though the private method isn’t called directly, it still needs to be available in the native image.

Hint files are generated under META-INF/native-image where they are automatically picked up by GraalVM.

Generated hint files can be found in target/spring-aot/main/resources when using Maven and build/generated/aotResources with Gradle.

Proxy Class Generation

Spring sometimes needs to generate proxy classes to enhance the code you’ve written with additional features. To do this, it uses the cglib library which directly generates bytecode.

When an application is running on the JVM, proxy classes are generated dynamically as the application runs. When creating a native image, these proxies need to be created at build-time so that they can be included by GraalVM.

Unlike source code generation, generated bytecode isn’t particularly helpful when debugging an application. However, if you need to inspect the contents of the .class files using a tool such as javap you can find them in target/spring-aot/main/classes for Maven and build/generated/aotClasses for Gradle.