Building native images for fun and profit
summary
GraalVM Substrate VM compiles a Java app ahead-of-time into an ELF binary that removes the JVM, yielding tiny binaries and fast startup—measured 4 ms cold start vs ~85 ms on HotSpot—and demos a Vert.x app that consumes blockchain websocket events, inserts into Postgres and publishes to browsers via the event bus and SockJS (demo runs successfully). Build takes about three minutes in Docker, runtime memory can be under tens of megabytes depending on features, and limitations include lack of JIT and trouble with reflection or dynamic loading unless addressed. GraalVM native-image 4 ms startup 3 minute build no JIT / reflection pitfalls
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