Refactoring-based support for binary compatibility in evolving frameworks

Abstract

The evolution of a software framework may invalidate existing plugins - modules that used one of its previous versions. To preserve binary compatibility (i.e., plugins will link and run with a new framework release without recompilation), we automatically create an adaptation layer that translates between plugins and the framework. The creation of these adapters is guided by information about syntactic framework changes (refactorings). For each supported refactoring we formally define a comeback - a refactoring used to construct adapters. For an ordered set of refactorings that occured between two framework versions, the backward execution of the corresponding comebacks yields the adaptation layer.