Add the Endive 1.1.0 release blog post

docs/blog/2026-09-03-endive-1.1.0.md

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+---
+slug: endive-1.1.0
+title: 'Endive 1.1.0: Native Speed, Signed Modules, and the End of Summer'
+authors: [andreaTP]
+tags: [wasm, endive, release, redline]
+---
+
+The evenings are getting shorter here, which is usually when we take stock of a summer's work.
+**Endive 1.1.0** is out, the first feature release since [Endive 1.0](/blog/endive-1.0), and two
+things in it are genuinely new. `redline` compiles your Wasm module all the way down to native
+machine code. `inlay` gets that module into your build with a locked digest and a verified signature.
+Behind them sits a long, quiet list of refinements to conformance, error handling and
+concurrency.
+
+<!-- truncate -->
+
+## `redline`: Native Speed, Zero Native Dependencies
+
+[`redline`](/docs/experimental/redline) compiles your Wasm module to native machine code with
+[Cranelift](https://cranelift.dev/) instead of to JVM bytecode. It started life as a separate
+prototype and now lives in the Endive tree, cleaned up and harmonized with the rest of the project.
+
+Here is how it works. Cranelift is written in Rust, and Rust compiles to Wasm, so we compile
+Cranelift itself to a `.wasm` module and run it on Endive at build time. Your module goes in,
+native code for six platforms comes out (Linux, macOS and Windows, each on x86_64 and aarch64), and
+it is bundled into your jar as a resource. At runtime the right one is picked and called through
+Panama FFM on Java 25 or later, or through jffi on Java 11 or later. There is no JNI, no native
+toolchain to install, and no platform specific artifact for you to publish.
+
+The reason to reach for it is speed. On real modules like SQLite and the Prism Ruby parser we
+measured several times the throughput of the bytecode compiler, with the largest gains on compute
+heavy code. Those numbers, and how we arrived at them, are in the
+[original introduction](/blog/chicory-redline).
+
+Enable it on the compiler plugin and add a runner:
+
+```xml
+<configuration>
+  <name>org.acme.wasm.MyModule</name>
+  <wasmFile>src/main/resources/my.wasm</wasmFile>
+  <redlineExperimental>true</redlineExperimental>
+</configuration>
+```
+
+```xml
+<dependency>
+  <groupId>run.endive</groupId>
+  <artifactId>redline-runner-experimental</artifactId>
+  <version>${endive.version}</version>
+</dependency>
+```
+
+This is the first release of an entirely new compiler. It handles the use cases we set out to
+cover, the core specification along with bulk memory, tail calls, threads and atomics, and
+reference type instructions, and there is more ground ahead before it is on par with the rest of
+the project: newer proposals such as GC, exception handling and SIMD are still to come, and the
+API is [experimental](/docs/experimental/why) while we collect feedback from early adopters. That
+gap has been closing fast, and every week of this summer moved it a little further.
+
+Bytecode is always generated alongside the native code and takes over wherever native code is not
+available, so your module runs on any platform. The [documentation](/docs/experimental/redline) has
+the feature matrix, the supported platforms, and the handful of details worth reading before you
+turn it on.
+
+## `inlay`: Wasm Dependencies, Supply Chain Security Included
+
+Running Wasm on the JVM is a solved problem. Getting the right `.wasm` file into your build
+reliably was not. Across our own projects we had tried committing binaries to git, downloading
+tarballs from releases, and building from source on every CI run. All of them work until they do
+not, and none of them offer integrity checking.
+
+[`inlay`](https://github.com/roastedroot/inlay) is a Maven plugin that fetches Wasm modules from OCI
+registries, which is where the Wasm ecosystem has converged. It writes a `wkg.lock` file in the
+Bytecode Alliance [wkg format](https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasm-pkg-tools), pinning every
+module by digest, so every developer and CI node builds from the exact same bytes. It verifies
+sigstore signatures inline after each fetch, and fails the build when the identity does not match.
+It caches by digest in `~/.cache/inlay/`, so `mvn clean` does not cost you a download.
+
+```xml
+<module>
+  <imageRef>ghcr.io/roastedroot/sqlite4j-wasm:3.51.0</imageRef>
+  <outputFile>${project.build.directory}/wasm/libsqlite3.wasm</outputFile>
+  <sigstoreIssuer>https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com</sigstoreIssuer>
+  <sigstoreIdentity>https://github.com/roastedroot/*</sigstoreIdentity>
+</module>
+```
+
+It binds to `generate-sources`, so it composes with the Endive compiler plugin: `mvn compile`
+fetches the module and compiles it, and there is nothing else in the pipeline.
+
+The `wkg.lock` format is defined by a Rust crate, so rather than reimplement the parser we compiled
+that crate to Wasm and run it on Endive, the same way we run the Cranelift bridge and
+`wasm-tools`. Endive itself now uses `inlay` to fetch `wasm-tools` for its own build, so the plugin
+is already carrying its share of the load.
+
+## The Unglamorous Half
+
+The rest of the release went into the kind of work that never makes a headline. Conformance moved
+closer to the specification across the parser, the validator and the compiler, so more modules
+behave exactly as their toolchain intended. Failures became more predictable, arriving as
+exceptions a host can catch and act on regardless of how the JVM was started. Concurrency got its
+share too, in the atomics behind the threads proposal and in how little memory instantiation now
+allocates, which counts most when many instances are live at once. None of it asks anything of
+you, it just means fewer surprises in the places you would rather not think about. The
+[release notes](https://github.com/bytecodealliance/endive/releases/tag/1.1.0) have the individual
+commits.
+
+## Thanks
+
+This release is the work of a lot of people who are not us, and much of it arrived as pull
+requests from the community, complete with regression tests. Thank you to everyone who shipped
+code, filed an issue with a reproducer, tested a snapshot, or fixed a link in the docs.
+The [adopters list](https://github.com/bytecodealliance/endive/blob/main/ADOPTERS.md) keeps growing,
+and it is the clearest sign that this is solving real problems.
+
+[Documentation](https://endive.run/docs/) | [GitHub](https://github.com/bytecodealliance/endive)
+
+Summer is closing, the pace is not. Enjoy the last of the long evenings, and tell us what you are
+building.
+[Join the conversation on Zulip](https://bytecodealliance.zulipchat.com/#narrow/stream/endive).