@phdthesis{Niephaus2022,
  author    = {Niephaus, Fabio},
  title     = {Exploratory tool-building platforms for polyglot virtual machines},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-57177},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-571776},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {xxi, 249},
  year      = {2022},
  abstract  = {Polyglot programming allows developers to use multiple programming languages within the same software project. While it is common to use more than one language in certain programming domains, developers also apply polyglot programming for other purposes such as to re-use software written in other languages. Although established approaches to polyglot programming come with significant limitations, for example, in terms of performance and tool support, developers still use them to be able to combine languages. Polyglot virtual machines (VMs) such as GraalVM provide a new level of polyglot programming, allowing languages to directly interact with each other. This reduces the amount of glue code needed to combine languages, results in better performance, and enables tools such as debuggers to work across languages. However, only a little research has focused on novel tools that are designed to support developers in building software with polyglot VMs. One reason is that tool-building is often an expensive activity, another one is that polyglot VMs are still a moving target as their use cases and requirements are not yet well understood. In this thesis, we present an approach that builds on existing self-sustaining programming systems such as Squeak/Smalltalk to enable exploratory programming, a practice for exploring and gathering software requirements, and re-use their extensive tool-building capabilities in the context of polyglot VMs. Based on TruffleSqueak, our implementation for the GraalVM, we further present five case studies that demonstrate how our approach helps tool developers to design and build tools for polyglot programming. We further show that TruffleSqueak can also be used by application developers to build and evolve polyglot applications at run-time and by language and runtime developers to understand the dynamic behavior of GraalVM languages and internals. Since our platform allows all these developers to apply polyglot programming, it can further help to better understand the advantages, use cases, requirements, and challenges of polyglot VMs. Moreover, we demonstrate that our approach can also be applied to other polyglot VMs and that insights gained through it are transferable to other programming systems. We conclude that our research on tools for polyglot programming is an important step toward making polyglot VMs more approachable for developers in practice. With good tool support, we believe polyglot VMs can make it much more common for developers to take advantage of multiple languages and their ecosystems when building software.},
  language  = {en}
}
@book{WassermannFelgentreffPapeetal.2016,
  author    = {Wassermann, Lars and Felgentreff, Tim and Pape, Tobias and Bolz, Carl Friedrich and Hirschfeld, Robert},
  title     = {Tracing Algorithmic Primitives in RSqueak/VM},
  number    = {104},
  publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam},
  address   = {Potsdam},
  isbn      = {978-3-86956-355-8},
  issn      = {1613-5652},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-91277},
  publisher      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {45},
  year      = {2016},
  abstract  = {When realizing a programming language as VM, implementing behavior as part of the VM, as primitive, usually results in reduced execution times. But supporting and developing primitive functions requires more effort than maintaining and using code in the hosted language since debugging is harder, and the turn-around times for VM parts are higher. Furthermore, source artifacts of primitive functions are seldom reused in new implementations of the same language. And if they are reused, the existing API usually is emulated, reducing the performance gains. Because of recent results in tracing dynamic compilation, the trade-off between performance and ease of implementation, reuse, and changeability might now be decided adversely. In this work, we investigate the trade-offs when creating primitives, and in particular how large a difference remains between primitive and hosted function run times in VMs with tracing just-in-time compiler. To that end, we implemented the algorithmic primitive BitBlt three times for RSqueak/VM. RSqueak/VM is a Smalltalk VM utilizing the PyPy RPython toolchain. We compare primitive implementations in C, RPython, and Smalltalk, showing that due to the tracing just-in-time compiler, the performance gap has lessened by one magnitude to one magnitude.},
  language  = {en}
}
@book{TessenowFelgentreffBrachaetal.2016,
  author    = {Tessenow, Philipp and Felgentreff, Tim and Bracha, Gilad and Hirschfeld, Robert},
  title     = {Extending a dynamic programming language and runtime environment with access control},
  number    = {107},
  publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam},
  address   = {Potsdam},
  isbn      = {978-3-86956-373-2},
  issn      = {1613-5652},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-92560},
  publisher      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {83},
  year      = {2016},
  abstract  = {Complexity in software systems is a major factor driving development and maintenance costs. To master this complexity, software is divided into modules that can be developed and tested separately. In order to support this separation of modules, each module should provide a clean and concise public interface. Therefore, the ability to selectively hide functionality using access control is an important feature in a programming language intended for complex software systems. Software systems are increasingly distributed, adding not only to their inherent complexity, but also presenting security challenges. The object-capability approach addresses these challenges by defining language properties providing only minimal capabilities to objects. One programming language that is based on the object-capability approach is Newspeak, a dynamic programming language designed for modularity and security. The Newspeak specification describes access control as one of Newspeak's properties, because it is a requirement for the object-capability approach. However, access control, as defined in the Newspeak specification, is currently not enforced in its implementation. This work introduces an access control implementation for Newspeak, enabling the security of object-capabilities and enhancing modularity. We describe our implementation of access control for Newspeak. We adapted the runtime environment, the reflective system, the compiler toolchain, and the virtual machine. Finally, we describe a migration strategy for the existing Newspeak code base, so that our access control implementation can be integrated with minimal effort.},
  language  = {en}
}