Not entirely true regarding JikesRVM (I've worked on this project) and from memory still not true of Maxine. Maxine and Jikes' compiler components are run durin

Not entirely true regarding JikesRVM (I've worked on this project) and from memory still not true of Maxine. Maxine and Jikes' compiler components are run during build on Oracle HotSpot etc, however at run time they are entirely self sufficient. At least in the case of Jikes, there is a small C initialiser that loads in the "Compiled" memory image of JikesRVM, initialises some handlers, then jumps into Jikes' initialisation routine which JIT compiles and brings up the remainder of the VM.