js.exe & other standalone artifacts are gone; but Maven can replace their functionality, somehow...

[graal-js]

Unfortunately, "starting with 25.0.3, JVM Standalone artifacts are no longer supported and are not included in this release." This is a nightmare for people like me who depend on js.exe. Many Java frameworks and libraries have the Java outer structure that invoke or embed JavaScript. However, the second possibility, was the JavaScript outer structure which invokes Java classes, interfaces, and methods, in JS clothing. What got lost in the latest version of GraalJS (and the disappearance of the releases with -jvm in their file names) is the feeling of a language runtime. Now that convenience has vanished and people have to concoct custom Java launchers for anything they wanna write in JS outer shape. That's horrible!

It seems the GraalVM team is heading toward the dependency and library-embedding paradigm rather than runtime and convenience for developers. At least they could release the artifacts for GraalJS, as JavaScript is a more prevalent language than others. But guys, you just destroyed the sweetest part of GraalJS. I hope those nice artifacts return soon.

[graal-js]

I thought Maven only works for the other way around in GraalJS (.java files that embed JavaScript files within.) Fortunately, it also works the other way around too (.js files that use Java classes and interfaces, and invoke Java methods). I worked it out by writing a very simple Java launcher, and a pom.xml that pulls dependencies of my .js scripts from the Maven repository. Those dependencies, for the particular test project I'd chosen, were a JDBC driver, some i18n, and a GUI look-n-feel JAR files. This method, in a way, is more elegant than the old way, I got to frankly admit, but only if you are Okay with migrating your runtime-based projects to Maven projects. I even managed to run the two types of GraalJS versions in parallel within one project; the last version of GraalJS with js.exe included in it, and the latest version that was stripped from all the standalone artifacts. And even that also worked seamlessly.

But again, this is me who is totally fine with the Apache Maven project style and writing an additional custom Java launcher, and even for me a migration is needed if I want to use up-to-date GraalJS versions. For those who have to depend on runtime, I see no other way but to use the older GraalJS versions, or maybe some other way that I'm not aware of, and I'd be happy to learn it.

[mikehearn]

I think it would be quite easy to build a custom launcher with whatever features are desired as a separate open source project. It should not be a lot of code.