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

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

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

If you use the automatically generated release tarballs or zip files please note that they don'tcontain the third party libraries needed to successfully build MoarVM.

Building and installing the VM itself takes just:

perl Configure.plmake install

(Ornmake/gmake on Windows). Currently it is known to build on Windowswith MSVC and gcc, and withgcc andclang on Linux & MacOS X. We'reexpanding this with time.

Typeperl Configure.pl --help to see the configure-time options, as wellas some descriptions of the make-time options/targets.

After installing MoarVM, you can clone the NQP repository or grab a sourcetarball 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, buildand install a copy of MoarVM on its own if you supply the--gen-moar flag.

Please bear in mind that this will be the prefix to the/bin,/lib and other directories where themoar executable and other files are going to be installed, so you'll have to use/usr if you wantmoar to be copied to/usr/bin.

When pointing theConfigure.pl script in rakudo's repository at a--prefixthat has annqp-m installed in it, it will automatically detect and configurethe MoarVM backend. Alternatively,--backend=moar,jvm can be used to forceit to build the MoarVM and JVM backends, for example. Just like in the NQPConfigure.pl script, you have the option to supply a--gen-moar flag thatwill do all the work for you, including creating annqp-m.

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

Unlike the JVM or JS backend of NQP, the MoarVM repo is not integrated into theNQP source repo but instead can be pulledin by runningConfigure.pl --gen-moar configure script in the NQP repo.

Some key features provided by MoarVM include:

• Meta-object programming, using the 6model design
• Precise, generational, and parallel GC
• Unicode 15 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 (includingresolution of method calls and multiple dispatch, dead code elimination,inlining, on stack replacement, scalar replacement, and partial escapeanalysis)
• JIT compilation
• Instrumentation-based profiling of call frames and allocations
• Heap snapshotting
• Remote Debugging with single stepping and variable/object introspection

Contributions by pull request are accepted. Commit bits are given to those whocontribute quality work. If you are interested in contributing, drop by the#moarvm channel on libera.chat.

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

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 youwant to use a GNU toolchain, and you get an error telling you to see this file, simply supply the--toolchain=gnu flag and this package will configure and build with a GNU toolchain.

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

Note both compilers define macro__GNUC__, so macro__clang__ needs to be tested first to disambiguate the two.