Some OSes (notably, Windows CE) restrict the size of the call stack
such that recursive compilation of branch instructions can lead to
stack overflow in methods with large numbers of such instructions. In
fact, a worst-case method could even lead to overflow when the stack
size limit is relatively generous.
The solution is to convert this recursion into iteration with an
explicit stack to maintain state about alternate paths through each
branch.
Instead of giving up when the backing allocator's tryAllocate method
returns null, we switch to the allocate method to show we mean
business. This makes use of zones more robust under low memory
situations since it allows us to exceed the soft memory ceiling when
the only alternative is to abort.
Unlike the interpreter, the JIT compiler tries to resolve all the
symbols referenced by a method when compiling that method. However,
this can backfire if a symbol cannot be resolved: we end up throwing
an e.g. NoClassDefFoundError for code which may never be executed.
This is particularly troublesome for code which supports multiple
APIs, choosing one at runtime.
The solution is to defer to stub code for symbols which can't be
resolved at JIT compile time. Such a stub will try again at runtime
to resolve the needed symbol and throw an appropriate error if it
still can't be found.
We now support immortal objects, which the GC will scan for references
but not consider for collection. On x86_64, we allocate JIT code memory
via mmap, which lets us map memory into the bottom 2GB of the address
space, ensuring that 32-bit relative jumps and calls work.
