Maxine Virtual Machine

Maxine

Screenshot  Maxine Inspector Screen Image
Developer(s)	The Maxine Project at Oracle Labs
Written in	Java
Operating system	Solaris, Linux, Mac OS X
Type	Java Virtual Machine
License	GPL version 2.0
Website	https://kenai.com/projects/maxine

The Maxine Virtual Machine is an open source virtual machine that was developed by Oracle Labs (formerly Sun Microsystems Laboratories). The emphasis in Maxine's architecture is on modular design and code reuse in the name of flexibility, configurability, and productivity for industrial and academic virtual machine researchers. It is one of a growing number of Java Virtual Machines written entirely in Java in a meta-circular style (for example, Squawk and Jikes RVM).

Oracle has stopped development of Maxine with the release of Maxine 2.0.

Architecture

The Maxine VM is characterized internally by aggressive use of advanced language features in Java 1.5 and 1.6, by modular subsystems coordinated through Java interfaces, and by the absence of an interpreter.

Compatibility

Maxine is plug compatible with an unmodified JDK. Maxine can be developed, built, and run in standard Java IDEs, including Netbeans, Eclipse, and IntelliJ IDEA.

Systems programming in Java

A secondary goal of the project is development of methodologies and tools for "systems programming in Java". Compiler extensions, configured in VM source code using Java annotations, permit the use, without performance penalty, of low-level operations that are not otherwise allowed in Java.

The Maxine Inspector

Specialized debugging support for the Maxine VM is provided by the Maxine Inspector: a companion tool that acts as a combined object, class, and method browser, as well as a machine-level debugger. The Inspector runs out-of-process, requires no active VM support, and leverages code shared with the VM for specialized developer services.

See also

• List of Java virtual machines
• Squawk
• Jikes RVM

External links

• Maxine Project Home Page
• Maxine Project publications