Actors

An actor is an object that represents a Java language entity (e.g. a Class, Method, or Field) in the VM and implements the entity’s runtime behavior. All Maxine actors are instances of classes that extend abstract class com.sun.max.vm.actor.Actor.

Maxine actors can be viewed as enhanced reflection classes (i.e. classes such as java.lang.reflect.Method and java.lang.Class). Java reflection classes by design hide implementation details specific to any VM (including in most cases information about the underlying class file). Maxine actors, on the other hand, exist precisely to implement those internal details specifically for the Maxine VM.

Actors and their JDK counterparts

The implementation of Maxine actors and their JDK java.lang.reflect counterparts are typically intertwined. Since the Maxine VM is designed to operate with a standard, unmodified JDK, modifications must be made dynamically to some JDK classes at VM startup so that the two can be coordinated.

Three techniques make this possible:

  1. Aliases: direct, non-reflective access to JDK fields and methods, even when prohibited by standard Java access rules;
  2. Field injection: adding a field to a JDK class, for example a pointer from an instance of java.lang.reflect.Class to its corresponding ClassActor; and
  3. Method substitution: replacement of a JDK method.

See JDK interoperation for details and examples.

Flags

The abstract class Actor contains exactly one field, a word used as a bit field, along with a number of accessor methods for those values. These provide efficient and flexible access to properties of interest for all actors.

Many of the flags correspond to properties defined by the Java language, for example the presence of keywords such as public, private, and final. These are documented at the head of the the file and are cross-referenced to the Java Language Specification. Other flags are used strictly for internal implementation.

The Actor types

This section mentions a few members of the Actor type hierarchy; the actual type hierarchy is a bit more complex.

ClassActor

A ClassActor represents many of the implementation details for a Java class. For example, it includes a reference to the corresponding instance of java.lang.Class, which in turn contains an injected field reference that points back at the ClassActor.

A ClassActor also holds references to the class’s methods (instances of MethodActor), fields(instances of FieldActor), its superclass, its static and dynamic hubs, and more.

ClassActor is abstract, with three subclasses:

1, InterfaceActor represents Java interfaces.

  1. PrimitiveClassActor represents primitive Java types, as described by KindEnum (corresponding to the primitive Java types plus some created only for VM internal use).
  2. ReferenceClassActor represents non-primitive Java types using three concrete subclasses:
    1. ArrayClassActor<Value_Type> represents Java arrays;
    2. TupleClassActor represents ordinary Java objects;
    3. HybridClassActor represents a kind of object that cannot be expressed in Java: a combination of array plus fields that is used internally to represents Maxine hubs.

An ordinary object instance in the VM’s heap contains a header that, among other things, identifies the object’s type. This field points not at the ClassActor for the object’s type, but rather at the dynamic hub for the class. In the case of the exceptional object that holds the static fields of a class (the static tuple), the header points to the static hub for the class.

FieldActor

A FieldActor contains the implementation details for a field in a Java class. Such details include a reference to the representation of the field’s type and to its holder: the instance of ClassActor representing the implementation of the class to which the field belongs.

A subclass of FieldActor, InjectedReferenceFieldActor, represents a synthesized field that has been added dynamically to a JDK class.

See field injection for details and examples.

MethodActor

A MethodActor contains the implementation details for a method in a Java class. Such details include a reference to the representation of the method’s signature, to it’s holder (the instance of ClassActor representing the implementation of the class to which the method belongs), and to zero or more possible compilations of the method.

The MethodActor class is itself abstract, with concrete subclasses defined to implement various flavors of implementation: static methods, virtual methods, interface methods, and so-called miranda methods.