GraalSqueak: toward a smalltalk-based tooling platform for polyglot programming

Abstract

Polyglot programming provides software developers with a broader choice in terms of software libraries and frameworks available for building applications. Previous research and engineering activities have focused on language interoperability and the design and implementation of fast polyglot runtimes. To make polyglot programming more approachable for developers, novel software development tools are needed that help them build polyglot applications. We believe a suitable prototyping platform helps to more quickly evaluate new ideas for such tools. In this paper we present GraalSqueak, a Squeak/Smalltalk virtual machine implementation for the GraalVM. We report our experience implementing GraalSqueak, evaluate the performance of the language and the programming environment, and discuss how the system can be used as a tooling platform for polyglot programming.