MoarVM

MoarVM (short for Metamodel On A Runtime Virtual Machine) is a runtime built for the 6model object system. It is primarily aimed at running NQP and Rakudo, but should be able to serve as a backend for any compilers built using the NQP compiler toolchain.

Get It

Either download it from the MoarVM site or clone it from GitHub:

git clone https://github.com/MoarVM/MoarVM.git

Build It

Building and installing the VM itself takes just:

perl Configure.pl
make install

(Or

nmake

gmake

gcc

clang

Type

perl Configure.pl --help

Building an NQP with MoarVM

After installing MoarVM, you can clone the NQP repository or grab a source tarball and use the Configure.pl script in it like so:

perl Configure.pl --backend=moar --prefix=where_your_moarvm_install_lives

Alternatively, the same Configure.pl script in NQP is able to clone, build and install a copy of MoarVM on its own if you supply the

--gen-moar

Please bear in mind that this will be the prefix to the

/bin

,

/lib

and other directories where the

moar

executable and other files are going to be installed, so you'll have to use

/usr

if you want

moar

to be copied to

/usr/bin

.

Building a Rakudo with MoarVM

When pointing the

Configure.pl

--prefix

nqp-m

--backend=moar,jvm

Configure.pl

--gen-moar

nqp-m

Status

MoarVM is currently in development. It can run all of the NQP test suite, all of the Rakudo sanity tests, and passes more spectests than any other Rakudo backend.

Unlike the JVM or JS backend of NQP, the MoarVM repo is not integrated into the NQP source repo but instead can be pulled in by running

Configure.pl --gen-moar

Feature overview

Some key features provided by MoarVM include:

• Meta-object programming, using the 6model design
• Precise, generational, and parallel GC
• Unicode 13.1 support (Unicode Character Database, encodings, normalization)
• First-class code objects, lexical variables and closures
• Exceptions
• Continuations
• Bounded serialization
• Runtime loading of code
• Big integers
• A range of IO and process support, including asynchronous sockets, signals, timers, and processes
• Native calling and native pointer manipulation
• Threads, mutexes, condition variables, semaphores, and blocking queues
• Bytecode specialization by type, and numerous optimizations (including resolution of method calls and multiple dispatch, dead code elimination, inlining, on stack replacement, scalar replacement, and partial escape analysis)
• JIT compilation
• Instrumentation-based profiling of call frames and allocations
• Heap snapshotting
• Remote Debugging with single stepping and variable/object introspection

Contributing

Contributions by pull request are accepted. Commit bits are given to those who contribute quality work. If you are interested in contributing, drop by the

#moarvm

See the LICENSE file in the root directory for information on the license of the source code in the MoarVM repository.

Troubleshooting

Linker can't find appropriate symbols on macOS

If MoarVM fails to build, and the error looks something like this:

ld: symbol(s) not found for architecture x86_64

you likely have an incompatible mix of build and bin utils.

While it is common to have toolchains installed from third party repositories in macOS, they aren't all compatible. In the event you run into this issue, please try these steps.

1. Unlink your tools in homebrew:

   brew unlink binutils

2. Destroy and re-clone MoarVM or rakudobrew
3. Attempt the build again from scratch

If you want to use a GNU toolchain, and you get an error telling you to see this file, simply supply the

--toolchain=gnu

Please note: If you use mixed Xcode and non-Xcode tools, you are likely to run into trouble. As such, this configuration is unsupported.