Oracle's GraalVM To Shift Focus To Non-Java Languages Like Python & JavaScript

GraalVM has been an interesting and performant Java JDK that over time added support for additional programming languages and execution models. Following their 2022 announcement that GraalVM CE Java code would be donated to OpenJDK, Oracle recently announced that moving forward GraalVM will focus on non-Java languages.

Due to donating their Java code to OpenJDK and upstream Java working on features around AOT code compilation, faster start-up times and more as part of Project Leyden, Oracle will effectively be divesting GraalVM from Java.

GraalVM will be transitioning to working on non-Java languages like Python (GraalPy) and JavaScript (GraalJS). GraalVM has also experimented with an LLVM Runtime, WebAssembly/WASM, Ruby, and R language implementations too over the years.

Focusing on non-Java languages for GraalVM was announced on the Oracle Java blog.