Besides checking out the binding, it is also necessary to checkout a fork containing a modified version of the Julia repository (https://github.com/mmtk/julia).
For example, we check out the fork as a sibling of mmtk-julia.
For step-by-step instructions, read the section "Quick Building Guide".
The directory structure should look like the diagram below:
Your working directory/
├─ mmtk-julia/
│ ├─ julia/
│ └─ mmtk/
├─ julia/ (should be cloned manually)
└─ mmtk-core/ (optional)
Before building Julia, build the binding in mmtk-julia/mmtk. Note that we currently support either immix or stickyimmix implementations in mmtk-core (build it with cargo build --features immix or cargo build --features stickyimmix). Add --release at the end if you would like to have a release build, otherwise it is a debug build.
To build Julia with MMTk, create a Make.user file in the top-level directory of the Julia repository and add an entry WITH_MMTK=1. Finally, set the following environment variables:
export MMTK_BUILD=release # or debug depending on how you build the Julia binding in Rust
export MMTK_JULIA_DIR=<path-to-mmtk-julia>
Then run make with the environment variables mentioned above. Please also make sure to install any dependency considering any particular requirement from both Julia and MMTk.
Currently MMTk supports a fixed heap limit or variable heap within an interval. The default is a variable heap with the minimum heap size set to Julia's default_collection_interval and the maximum size set to 70% of the free memory available. To change these values set the environment variables MMTK_MIN_HSIZE and MMTK_MAX_HSIZE to set the mininum and maximum size in megabytes, or MMTK_MIN_HSIZE_G and MMTK_MAX_HSIZE_G to set the size in gigabytes. If both environment variables are set, MMTk will use the size in megabytes. To set a fixed heap size, simply set only the variables MMTK_MAX_HSIZE or MMTK_MAX_HSIZE_G, or set MMTK_MIN_HSIZE or MMTK_MIN_HSIZE_G to 0. Note that these values can be decimal numbers, e.g. MMTK_MAX_HSIZE_G=1.5.
These environment variables are set during julia initialization time, so they can be set per-julia process.
(1) Clone this repo: https://github.com/mmtk/mmtk-julia (run git clone https://github.com/mmtk/mmtk-julia)
(2) Clone this repo: https://github.com/mmtk/julia (run git clone https://github.com/mmtk/julia.git)
(3) In mmtk-julia/mmtk, run cargo build --features immix --release
(4) In julia, create a file Make.user, and add WITH_MMTK=1.
(5) In julia, run MMTK_PLAN=Immix MMTK_BUILD=release MMTK_JULIA_DIR=/absolute/path/mmtk-julia make (or with MMTK_PLAN=StickyImmix).
If you would like to have a debug build, remove --release from Step (3) and use MMTK_BUILD=debug in Step (5)
More about MMTk: https://github.com/mmtk/mmtk-core
More about Julia: https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia