native

Kotlin and FaaS, an impossible union?

Some time ago, I read a post describing how to run a serverless Kotlin function on OpenFaaS. While the content is technically correct, I believe the concept itself is very wrong. Such posts can lead people to make ill-advised decisions: 'because we can' is hardly a winning strategy. in this post, I’d like to first explain why the JVM platform is a bad idea for FaaS. Then, I’ll proceed to propose alternatives to use Kotlin nonetheless.

Java

Configuring Graal Native AOT for reflection

I’ve been following GraalVM with a lot of interest. One of the interesting areas is its ability to compile bytecode Ahead-Of-Time, and create a native image. Such images have a lot of advantages, including small size, no dependency on a JRE, etc. However, AOT has some limitations. In particular, the native image executable cannot compile what it doesn’t know about. This post aims to describe how to configure the compilation process when code is using reflection.

Java

JNA meets JNI

I reccently stumbled upon a nice framework you’ll love if you ever have to work with native code. Before this framework, if you needed to call native code, you would use JNI. JNI uses a proved but complex and error-prone process. First thing first, you write your Java classes like always. But for methods you want to delegate to native code, you use the native keyword and do not provide an implementation. Then, you call a JDK-provided executable named javah.