Managing the Evolution of .NET Programs Susan Eisenbach, Vladimir Jurisic and Chris Sadler Department of Computing Imperial College London, UK SW7 2BZ [sue, vj98]@doc.ic.ac.uk School of Computing Science Middlesex University London, UK N14 4YZ
[email protected] Abstract Programs in the .NET environment consist of collaborating software components, and the Common Language Runtime has been designed in such a way that linking occurs ‘just-in-time’. This offers a good platform for transpar- ent evolution, provided that compatibility can be maintained between service- providing components and their clients. One goal of program evolution is to use the most recent version of each com- ponent that will actually link. We propose a model of a cache of interdepen- dent evolving components with operations defined to update this cache safely. A demonstration tool Dejavue.NET implements these ideas. 1 Introduction The dynamic link library (DLL) was invented to allow applications running on a sin- gle system to share code. Sharing code in this way confers several distinct benefits. In the first place, applications both when running in memory and when stored on disk are likely to be smaller because duplicated code has been eliminated. In the second place, applications accessing common code share a common functionality so they all do cer- tain things in the same way. This is good for the users, who get a reliable and predictable user interface. It is also makes the operating system design more straightforward, with provision of access to certain facilities through narrow and well-defined interfaces. The main benefit however, arises when the DLL needs to be corrected or enhanced – in other words, to evolve.