A Calculus for Dynamic Linking

We define a calculus for modeling dynamic linking independently of the details of a particular programming environment. The calculus distinguishes at the language level the notions of software configuration and execution, by introducing separate syntactic notions of linkset expression and command, respectively. A reduction step can be either a simplification of a linkset expression, or the execution of a command w.r.t. a specific underlying software configuration denoted by a linkset expression; because of dynamic linking, these two kinds of reductions are interleaved. The type system of the calculus, which is proved to be sound, relies on an accurate dependency analysis for ensuring type safety without losing the advantages offered by dynamic linking.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: ICTCS
• Authors: Davide Ancona, Sonia Fagorzi, Elena Zucca
• Keywords: Dynamic Linking, ICTCS 2003, Linkset Expression, Separate Syntactic Notions