alt Hacker NewsExcelsior JET did that 25 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excelsior_JET
It's a shame that Sun/Oracle never partnered with them to bring native apps. This could have saved Java on the desktop.
Replies
pjmlp • yesterday at 7:21 PM
They were not the only ones, see PTC, Aicas, IBM, and a few others.
The big difference until GraalVM and OpenJ9 became available as open source, was that all those vendors made AOT compilation a commercial feature, and thus most devs never cared they existed.
In fact GraalVM was one of the main reasons Excelsior JET eventually closed doors.
patwolf • yesterday at 6:07 PM
IBM's J9 had AOT for a long time too. I wonder how JEP 544 compares.
DonHopkins • today at 2:02 AM
The only thing that could possibly save Java on the desktop would require Oracle not owning it.
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Don't forget GCJ. It wasn't removed from GCC until about 2016, a nearly 20-year long run, though interest had waned many years prior.
I don't remember if GCJ supported loading and running code dynamically with a built-in JIT or interpreter. I think it was just pure AOT, which caused some compatibility headaches.