A simple JVM implementation in Lua

Lukyt

Lukyt is a JVM made in Lua supporting Java 1.2. It's main advantage is to currently have a very small startup time and overhead.

Features:

• While loops (technically should work)
• For loops
• Native support (integration from Lua side)
• Standard library (will prob move to GNU Classpath)
  • System.out
  • Some system methods
  • Basic PrintStreams
  • Lua integration (from Java side)
    • OS class
• Full int/short/byte/char math
• Full float math
• Full long/double math
• Classes
• Interfaces
• Throwables
• JIT

How to use?

The JVM itself can be used by any program and is independent from the command-line program.

The command line program allows to execute classes. You can print an help message with lua lukyt.lua --help

To launch the HelloWorld test, you can do:

lua lukyt.lua --classpath=test HelloWorld

which will give the same result as:

java -cp test HelloWorld

You'll notice Lukyt seemingly takes less time to execute the HelloWorld program. This is because all the overhead of the JVM are not required on a program that small. So on small programs, Lukyt's small overhead and interpreter are able to execute the program fastly.