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Type-based hot swapping of running modules

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Abstract.

While dynamic linking has become an integral part of the run-time execution of modern programming languages, there is increasing recognition of the need for support for hot swapping of running modules, particularly in long-lived server applications. The interesting challenge for such a facility is to allow the new module to change the types exported by the original module, while preserving type safety. This paper describes a type-based approach to hot swapping running modules. The approach is based on a reflective mechanism for dynamically adding type sharing constraints to the type system, realized by programmer-defined version adapters in the run-time.

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  1. Department of Computer Science, Stevens Institute of Technology, Castle Point on the Hudson, NJ 07040, Hoboken, USA

    Dominic Duggan

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  1. Dominic Duggan
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Correspondence to Dominic Duggan.

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Received: 19 September 2002, Accepted: 21 September 2004, Published online: 16 February 2005

An extended abstract of this work appeared in International Conference on Functional Programming (ICFP), Florence, Italy, September 2001.

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Duggan, D. Type-based hot swapping of running modules. Acta Informatica 41, 181–220 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00236-004-0151-1

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