Type-Safe linking with recursive DLLs and shared libraries

Abstract

Component-based programming is an increasingly prevalent theme in software development, motivating the need for expressive and safe module interconnection languages. Dynamic linking is an important requirement for module interconnection languages, as exemplified by dynamic link libraries (DLLs) and class loaders in operating systems and Java, respectively. A semantics is given for a type-safe module interconnection language that supports shared libraries and dynamic linking, as well as circular import dependencies (recursive modules). The core language requirements of the module interconnection language are compatible with programming languages such as Java and C#.