Dynamic reconfiguration in distributed systems: adapting software modules for replacement

Dynamic reconfiguration of a distributed application is the act of changing the configuration of the application as it executes. Examples of configuration changes are replacing a software component (module), moving a module to another machine, and adding or removing a module from the application. The extension to a reconfiguration platform described automatically prepares a module for participation in reconfiguration. A machine-independent method for automatically installing this functionality in the application, given a set of reconfiguration points designated by the programmer, is presented. The focus is on the difficult problem of capturing and restoring the state of a module during a procedure call, when the activation record stack contains crucial parts of the process state.<>