Blog post: Continued Focus on Native

Author: jerboaa

_posts/2025-10-31-continued-focus-on-native.adoc

@@ -0,0 +1,147 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: 'Continued Focus on Native'
+date: 2025-10-31
+tags: mandrel, native, graalvm
+synopsis: 'Quarkus continues to focus on native for swift start-up time and low memory footprint.'
+author: sgehwolf
+---
+:imagesdir: /assets/images/posts/continued-focus-native
+
+From its inception, Quarkus has offered the ability to compile Java
+applications into native binaries. This feature is crucial for achieving rapid
+startup times and reduced memory consumption, two properties that remain
+paramount to Quarkus' mission and that Quarkus remains committed to.
+
+We have already started preparing for the adoption of GraalVM 25 (via our
+Mandrel distribution), and expect to switch to it as the primary native builder
+in the near future.
+
+Quarkus uses the Mandrel GraalVM distribution to ensure continuity of updates
+on native-image capabilities.
+(https://quarkus.io/blog/mandrel-25-released/)[Mandrel 25] empowers Quarkus
+users to leverage the latest JDK innovations (JDK 25) and target cloud-native
+deployments through its native compilation capabilities. Our collaboration with
+the upstream GraalVM community during GraalVM 25’s development has strengthened
+our involvement, bringing these shared innovations directly to Quarkus users
+with the incorporation of the Mandrel 25 release.
+
+Key improvements that Mandrel 25 and Quarkus are expected to bring:
+
+* **Readiness for JDK 25 - Enhanced Compatibility and Stability:** Mandrel 25,
+  based on OpenJDK 25, offers improved compatibility with the latest OpenJDK
+  features and libraries, ensuring that Quarkus applications can leverage the
+  full spectrum of the Java ecosystem while maintaining the stability and
+  reliability expected of production-ready enterprise systems.
+* **Continued Focus on Key Metrics:** Mandrel 25 will be the technology of
+  choice in order to deliver on the cloud-native performance goals of fast
+  startup and low memory footprint of Quarkus releases for the next years to
+  come. Quarkus continues to enable aggressive initialization at built time to
+  achieve this.
+* **Enhanced Static Analysis Accuracy:** GraalVM 25 enables (https://github.com/oracle/graal/pull/9821)[Whole-Program
+  Sparse Conditional Constant Propagation (WP-SCCP)] by default, improving the
+  precision of points-to analysis in native image. This optimization enhances
+  static analysis accuracy and scalability, potentially reducing the size of the
+  final native binary.
+  (https://medium.com/graalvm/skipflow-producing-smaller-executables-with-graalvm-f18ca98279c2)[More information on the GraalVM blog].
+* **Improved Error Reporting and Diagnostics:** When resources or certain
+  reflective accesses aren't properly registered at image build time, it is now
+  being appropriately flagged by raising a specific exception when building with
+  Mandrel 25. Flags, `-XX:MissingRegistrationReportingMode=Warn` and
+  `-XX:MissingRegistrationWarnContextLines=<#lines>` can be used to diagnose. The
+  ability to handle `OutOfMemoryError` was added.
+* **Enhanced Monitoring Possibilities:** By leveraging Mandrel 25 more
+  monitoring options of the deployed native Quarkus application binary become
+  possible closing the gap between JVM mode and native mode. New JFR events, such
+  as Socket IO and native memory tracking events as well as JFR allocation
+  profiling becomes possible (via the `jdk.ObjectAllocationSample` event). The
+  addition of (https://www.graalvm.org/jdk25/reference-manual/native-image/debugging-and-diagnostics/jcmd/)[Java Diagnostic Command]
+  (JCMD) allows for triggering of certain actions on the running native image.
+  The JFR monitoring feature of native image has been enhanced to be more
+  configurable (via `-XX:FlightRecorderOptions`), previously only available in
+  JVM mode. Native memory tracking can be optionally enabled in order to diagnose
+  memory leaks (using `-Dquarkus.native.monitoring=nmt` at build time and
+  `-XX:+PrintNMTStatistics` at runtime)
+* **Full Support for the Foreign Function & Memory (FFM) API:** Quarkus
+  applications can now make use of full support of the FFM API (included in JVM
+  mode since JDK 22) when compiling to native using Mandrel 25. Upcall and
+  downcall support has been added for all supported Quarkus operating systems and
+  architectures.
+
+By seamlessly integrating Mandrel 25, and Quarkus’ continued focus on developer
+joy and productivity, together with new and emerging AI capabilities further
+solidifies Quarkus position as the premier framework for building
+high-performance, cloud-native Java applications. Developers can confidently
+leverage these advancements to deploy applications that are not only efficient
+but also deliver exceptional user experiences. Quarkus and Mandrel 25 combine
+to create a powerful synergy that pushes the boundaries of Java in today's
+modern computing landscape. This combination delivers on Quarkus’s Cloud Native
+Mission, offering swift start-up times and a low memory footprint.
+
+
+[[looking-ahead]]
+== Looking Ahead
+
+Beyond GraalVM 25, we are tracking the evolution of GraalVM closely as we have
+done in the past and will continue to work with the GraalVM team to evolve
+accordingly and ensure that Quarkus integrates well with it. We are looking
+forward to exciting new features, not least:
+
+1. (https://github.com/oracle/graal/issues/12237)[Shenandoah GC] integration
+2. (https://github.com/oracle/graal/issues/11327)[Project Crema] and dynamic
+   Java on top of native-image. This will unlock Java use cases that today
+   cannot run as native-image
+3. (https://github.com/oracle/graal/issues/7626)[Native Image Layers] to make
+   it possible to tune performance vs. usability
+4. Polyglot - First-class (https://www.graalvm.org/jdk25/reference-manual/js/)[JavaScript],
+   (https://www.graalvm.org/python/)[Python] and
+   (https://www.graalvm.org/webassembly/docs/)[Wasm] integrations
+
+[[community-collab]]
+== GraalVM Community Collaboration and GraalVM Summit
+
+The collaboration between Quarkus, Mandrel and GraalVM developers continues to
+be strong. What’s more, Mandrel is being developed as part of the GraalVM
+Github organization and the GraalVM for JDK 21 community effort was established
+as part of those community gatherings. Mandrel developers assumed maintainer
+roles for the (https://github.com/graalvm/graalvm-community-jdk21u/)[GraalVM
+for JDK 21 maintenance repository]. We hope to establish a similar model for
+GraalVM 25 and its downstream, Mandrel 25. The Mandrel team is certainly
+interested in stepping up for community maintenance of GraalVM 25 when the time
+comes.
+
+image::summit_2025_crowd_banner.png[GraalVM Summit 2025 - Crowd]
+
+For the past few years Quarkus and Mandrel developers have been attending the
+GraalVM Community summit. A powerful platform to exchange ideas and experience
+with the GraalVM technology. In 2025, five Quarkus/Mandrel developers attended
+the GraalVM Community Summit. We believe the event was a great success. These
+gatherings are tantamount to the Quarkus and GraalVM collaboration. We were
+glad to see that there is shared interest in making the public
+(https://github.com/oracle/graal/)[GraalVM github repository] a true upstream
+with an open governance model. This would further strengthen the GraalVM
+community and would help self-sustain certain areas.  Some of this has been
+already tested with the
+(https://github.com/graalvm/graalvm-community-jdk21u/)[GraalVM for JDK 21
+upstream] community repository.
+
+image::grid_people.png[Quarkus/Mandrel Developers at the GraalVM 2025 Summit]
+
+[[commitment-to-subatomic-java]]
+== Commitment to delivering "Supersonic Subatomic Java"
+
+The Quarkus project will continue to evaluate and incorporate the best
+available technologies to ensure its users benefit from optimal reliability,
+performance, and efficiency. This includes exploring advancements in all
+technologies and runtime environments as they evolve, such as project Leyden.
+Our goal remains to ensure that Quarkus remains at the forefront of
+cloud-native Java development. Our commitment is to provide developers with the
+flexibility to choose the tools that best fit their project's needs, while
+always delivering on our promise of "Supersonic Subatomic Java", and provide
+optimal, highly efficient deployment formats for a broad range of environments.
+
+Onward with Quarkus Native!
+
+You can share your feedback with us in Quarkus'
+https://quarkusio.zulipchat.com/[Zulip chat workspace] or on
+https://github.com/quarkusio/quarkus/[GitHub].