See the Dependencies in the README.
The requirements include a C compiler. Because it's a common issue, we remind macOS users
they might need to add export SDKROOT=$(xcrun --show-sdk-path)
to their shell profile.
Additionally, you will need:
- Ruby >= 2.3 (we stick at this version as it is available all the way back to for example Ubuntu 16.04)
- CMake, for building Sulong (GraalVM's LLVM support)
CMake can be installed via the usual methods:
dnf
,apt-get
,brew
, ...)
We recommend creating an extra directory for building TruffleRuby:
mkdir truffleruby-ws
cd truffleruby-ws
You can then clone the repository:
git clone https://github.com/oracle/truffleruby.git
cd truffleruby
We then use a Ruby script to run most commands.
bin/jt --help
Most of us add an alias to our shell profile file so that it can be run with
just jt
. To allow this to run from any path, add this to your ~/.bash_profile
:
export SYSTEM_RUBY=/path/to/mri/bin/ruby
alias jt=/path/to/truffleruby/bin/jt
Note: SYSTEM_RUBY
should be CRuby version 2.3 or higher.
jt --help
Please install this pre-commit
hook which runs the fast lint checks.
In our experience, it is way more efficient to use this hook than to wait for the CI,
and it also results in cleaner commits in the first place.
$ cp tool/hooks/lint-check.sh .git/hooks/pre-commit
It is also possible to use a pre-push
hook instead (cp tool/hooks/lint-check.sh .git/hooks/pre-push
).
That way the lint check runs only before git push
.
However, that might result in extra "Fix style" commits, which sometimes can be git rebase -i
away, but sometimes not.
jt build
By default the jt build
command builds a small JVM-only (no native images)
GraalVM containing only the Ruby language. The built GraalVM can be found in the
mxbuild/truffleruby-jvm
directory.
There are multiple build configurations available to build TruffleRuby:
jvm
: the default, JVM-only, no GraalVM compiler (Ruby code is always interpreted)jvm-ce
: JVM-only, with the GraalVM compilernative
: Builds a native image of TruffleRuby using SubstrateVM, including the GraalVM compiler
All jvm*
build configurations can only run the --jvm
runtime configuration.
The native
build configuration can run both the --native
and --jvm
runtime configurations.
To build one of these build configurations, pass --env
to the build command:
jt build [--env BUILD_CONFIGURATION]
You can create a new build configuration by creating an mx env file in mx.truffleruby
.
Builds are created in the mxbuild/truffleruby-${BUILD_NAME}
directory. By default, the build name is the
name of the build configuration, but you can specify a different name with --name BUILD_NAME
. This enables
you to store multiple builds that use the same configuration. Note that if you want to compare multiple builds using
the same --env
then you need to use --name
for all of them.
Without --name
, mxbuild/truffleruby-${env}
is just a symlink and will be reused by any build of the same --env
.
Note that build information such as the date and Git revision hash will not be updated when you build for a second time. Releases should always be built from scratch.
TruffleRuby needs the truffle
and sulong
suites from the graal
repository.
jt build
will automatically clone the repository but not enforce a specific version (commit).
When running jt build
, you might see an early warning:
$ jt build
...
NOTE: Set env variable JT_IMPORTS_DONT_ASK to always answer 'no' to this prompt.
WARNING: imported version of sulong in truffleruby (ae65c10142907329e03ad8e3fa17b88aca42058d) does not match parent (1bf42ddef0e4961cbb92ebc31019747fd1c15f1a)
Do you want to checkout the supported version of graal as specified in truffleruby's suite.py? (runs `mx sforceimports`) [y/n]
...
This warning is important.
- If you did not create new commits in
graal
, this means the graal import was bumped insuite.py
and you need to answery
to this prompt, which will be equivalent to runningjt mx sforceimports
before proceeding. - If you did create new
graal
commits, you should answern
or setJT_IMPORTS_DONT_ASK
(to any value) to automatically do so. - If you want to set the
suite.py
import to that checked out ingraal
(unlikely), you should run jt mx scheckimports` beforehand.
jt ruby
runs TruffleRuby.
You can use it exactly as you'd run the MRI ruby
command and this is useful to compare behavior.
Additionally, jt ruby
sets a couple of extra options to help you when
developing, such as loading the core library from disk rather than the JAR.
jt ruby
prints the real command it's running as it starts.
jt ruby
does not add TruffleRuby to PATH
and does not support installing gems
if GEM_HOME
or GEM_PATH
is set, see below for that.
The best here is to use a Ruby manager like rbenv
or chruby
for this.
jt build
automatically registers any truffleruby build with rbenv
or chruby
.
So you can simply chruby truffleruby-jvm
or rbenv shell truffleruby-jvm
(adapt the name for a different build configuration).
And with that, the gem environment is properly setup and you can use TruffleRuby just like you would use CRuby, including using gem
, bundle
, rake
, ruby
, etc.
By default, jt ruby
runs the jvm
build of TruffleRuby (that is, built with the --jvm
build
configuration and using the default build name) and aborts if this build doesn't exist.
You can also use jt
to run other TruffleRuby builds (see the Building section), just
pass the build name after --use
:
jt --use BUILD_NAME ruby ...
You can also pass the path to a Ruby executable after --use
, e.g.:
jt --use /usr/bin/ruby ruby ...
We have 'specs' which come from the Ruby Spec Suite. These are usually high quality, small tests, and are our priority at the moment. We also have MRI's unit tests, which are often very complex and we aren't actively working on now. Finally, we have tests of our own. The integration tests test more macro use of Ruby. The ecosystem tests test commands related to Ruby. The gems tests test a small number of key Ruby 3rd party modules.
The basic test to run every time you make changes is the "fast specs", a subset of specs which runs in reasonable time.
jt [--use BUILD_CONFIGURATION] test fast
Other tests take longer and require more setup, so we don't normally run them locally unless we're working on that functionality (instead, the CI runs them).
Specs under spec/ruby
are supposed to pass on both Truffle and MRI.
To run the tests or specs on MRI, pass --use ruby
:
jt --use ruby test path/to/spec.rb # assumes you have MRI in your PATH
jt --use /full/path/to/bin/ruby test path/to/spec.rb
Specify JVM options with --vm.option
.
jt ruby --vm.Xmx1G test.rb
TruffleRuby options are set with --name=value
. For example
--exceptions-print-java=true
to print Java exceptions before translating them
to Ruby exceptions. You can leave off the value to set the option to true
.
To see all options run jt ruby --help:languages
.
Ruby command line options and arguments can also be set in RUBYOPT
or
TRUFFLERUBYOPT
.
To build TruffleRuby with the GraalVM CE compiler, use:
jt build --env jvm-ce
Then, run TruffleRuby with:
jt --use jvm-ce ruby ...
We have flags in jt
to set some options, such as --trace
for
--engine.TraceCompilation
.
Under mx.truffleruby, there are build configurations to build a GraalVM with TruffleRuby and
other Truffle languages, such as jvm-js
and jvm-py
.
One can of course also make their own env file.
Let's look at the example of building with graaljs to be able to evaluate JavaScript code from TruffleRuby.
Building is as simple as cloning the repository and using the right env file:
cd truffleruby-ws/truffleruby
git clone https://github.com/graalvm/graaljs.git ../graaljs
jt build --env jvm-js
Similar for building with graalpython:
cd truffleruby-ws/truffleruby
git clone https://github.com/graalvm/graalpython.git ../graalpython
jt build --env jvm-py
Then, run TruffleRuby with --polyglot
support and evaluate some JavaScript:
$ jt --use jvm-js ruby --polyglot
> Polyglot.eval('js', 'var a = 1; a + 1')
=> 2
See the Polyglot and Truffle Interop documentation for details about polyglot programming.
The basic test for Graal is to run our compiler tests. This includes tests that things partially evaluate as we expect, that things optimise as we'd expect, that on-stack-replacement works and so on.
jt test compiler
We usually use the jt untag
command to work on failing specs. It runs only
specs that are marked as failing.
jt untag spec/ruby/core/string
When you find a spec that you want to work on, it can be easier to look at the
spec's source (for example look in spec/ruby/core/string
) and recreate it
as a standalone Ruby file for simplicity.
Then you probably want to run with --exceptions-print-java
if you see a Java
exception.
When the spec is fixed the untag
command will remove the tag and you can
commit the fix and the removal of the tag.
TruffleRuby currently targets Ruby 3.2. However, we welcome pull requests for Ruby 3.3 features as long as they don't conflict significantly with Ruby 3.2 semantics.
It is possible to run specs for Ruby 3.3 features by setting PRETEND_RUBY_VERSION
:
PRETEND_RUBY_VERSION=3.3.0 jt test spec/ruby/.../some_spec.rb
This also works for jt tag
/jt untag
.
When working on a feature from the next version of Ruby, add the spec file in
the corresponding files list in spec/truffleruby.next-specs
so that the specs
are run in CI too.
However this does not work for C-API specs,
because those use #ifdef RUBY_VERSION_IS_3_2
and that version cannot be faked.
Remove the exclusion of either the file (test/mri/failing.exclude
) or the
individual method (test/mri/excludes/...
) and run the individual file
jt test mri test/mri/tests/file.rb
to see any errors.
As with specs, you probably then want to recreate the test in a standalone Ruby file to fix it.
You can also recompute the tags automatically for an entire test file with
jt retag test/mri/tests/file.rb
.