USENIX Annual Technical Conference (NO 98), 1998
Abstract
Automatic Program Transformation with JOIE
Geoff A. Cohen and Jeffrey S. Chase, Duke University
David L. Kaminsky, IBM Application Development Technology Institute
Abstract
While the availability of platform-independent code on the
Internet is increasing, third-party code rarely exhibits all
of the features desired by end users.
Unfortunately, developers cannot foresee and provide for all
possible extensions.
In this paper, we describe load-time transformation, a stage in the program
development lifecycle in which classes are modified at load time according to
user-supplied directives. This allows the users to select transformations
that add new
features, customize the implementation of existing features,
and apply the changes to all classes in the environment.
The Java Object Instrumentation Environment (JOIE) is a toolkit for
constructing transformations of Java classes.
An enhanced class loader calls
user-supplied transformers that specify rules for transforming target
classes. We describe some applications of load-time transformation,
including extending the Java environment, integrating classes with specialized
environments, and adding functionality directly to classes.
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