Adapting virtual machine techniques for seamless aspect support

Abstract

Current approaches to compiling aspect-oriented programs are in-efficient. This inefficiency has negative effects on the productiv-ity of the development process and is especially prohibitive for dynamic aspect deployment. In this work, we present how well-known virtual machine techniques can be used with only slight modifications to support fast aspect deployment while retaining runtime performance. Our implementation accelerates dynamic as-pect deployment by several orders of magnitude relative to main-stream aspect-oriented environments. We also provide a detailed comparison of alternative implementations of execution environ-ments with support for dynamic aspect deployment.