You may have missed it, but the @graalvm.org team has recently open-sourced a variant of native image called web image, which compiles Java bytecode to WebAssembly bytecode instead of a native executable.
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This is still the early days, but I am pretty excited about this, as it could allow to run Java workloads in more places (browser, IoT, CDN, plugins outside the JVM world) and in a cheaper way.
It is also interesting to observe that the footprint is smaller than what I was expecting, and web image solves one of the biggest native image pain points by allowing fast compilation of WasmGC artifacts than can be optimized as a distinct and optional step by Binaryen when deploying to production.
In terms of DevXP, the debugging demos I have seen are already pretty neat, leveraging the experience the GraalVM team has built for years on multi-language programming.
GraalVM web image is of course a bet on the future, but is IMO a unique opportunity to increase the reach of our Java workloads. The GraalVM team has open sourced it, so let see if/how the community contributes to it to make it possible to use it on production like we do today with native image.
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