Maglev, Gemstone's Ruby VM, Finally Revealed

[oomkiller]

http://groups.google.com/group/maglev-discussion/browse_thread/thread/1102993e9e21492a

[petercooper]

I've posted this as news with extended links on related presentations and such here: http://www.rubyinside.com/maglev-alpha-released-2807.html

(Update: After some head scratching I finally got to an irb prompt and have written up instructions on that post on getting it all running on OS X. The announcement post doesn't really go into anything and I couldn't find a README.)

(Update 2: I ran a VERY flimsy benchmark from the Alioth shootout - the Fannkuch benchmark - on 1.8.7, 1.9.1, MacRuby and MagLev and get these results:

1.8.7 - 6.276s

1.9.1 - 3.539s

MagLev Alpha - 2.975s

MacRuby 0.5b2 - 4.649s

MacRuby 0.5b2 (compiled) - 2.901s

JRuby 1.4.0 (basic) - 5.579s

Take with a pinch of salt, etc. It's a single benchmark under less than scientific conditions.. I bet half of that JRuby figure, for example, is JRuby starting up the JVM ;-))

[avibryant → petercooper]

Try a benchmark that uses a lot of blocks and I bet the results are more interesting.

[oomkiller → petercooper]

Cool, nice to see a decent write-up on it rather than a Google Groups post.

[misuba]

So... how many RubySpecs _are_ there exactly? They pass over 28,000 and they aren't done. How much ground is left to cover?

[stcredzero → misuba]

This is why I opine that Ruby is a bit too complex!

[riffraff → stcredzero]

well, rubyspec covers builtin and bundled libraries. Not that this makes ruby-the-language simple, anyway.

[oomkiller]

Damn, a year and a half since it was announced and it still doesn't run Rails?

[mishmash → oomkiller]

I wonder if they're partially waiting for Rails3?

[oomkiller → mishmash]

Lord help us all if Rails 3 is so different than 2 that they're WAITING to make it compatible with MagLev.

[bhousel → oomkiller]

It isn't.. But why do something twice if you don't have to?

[jamesbritt → bhousel]

What's being done "twice"? The goal isn't to run specific applications or frameworks, it's to run Ruby code.

If they're going to tweak the VM to handle one specific use cases while ignoring others, then it's a not a Ruby VM.

[va_coder]

Where's the source code? Is Maglev open source?

I can't recall the last time I downloaded something in alpha or beta that wasn't open source.

[oomkiller → va_coder]

Not exactly sure of the license, but they do have something on GitHub. I believe Maglev itself is open source, but it relies on the GemStone/S VM, which is NOT open source.

[va_coder → oomkiller]

FYI

The GemStone Virtual Machine and associated binary files and libraries written by GemStone Systems, Inc. are governed by: GemStone-Web-License.txt

[technomancy → oomkiller]

> but it relies on the GemStone/S VM, which is NOT open source.

...making it about as interesting as pre-GPL'd Java. No thanks.