Abstract

Separate compilation allows the decomposition of programs into units that may be compiled separately, and linked into an executable. Traditionally, separate compilation was equivalent to the compilation of all units together, and modication and re-compilation of one unit required re-compilation of all importing units. Java suggests a more flexible framework, in which the linker checks the integrity of the binaries to be combined. Certain source code modifications, such as addition of methods to classes, are deemed binary compatible. The language description guarantees that binaries of types (i.e. classes or interfaces) modified in binary compatible ways may be re-compiled and linked with the binaries of types that imported and were compiled using the earlier versions of the modied types. However, this is not always the case: some of the changes considered by Java as binary compatible do not guarantee successful linking and execution. In this paper we study the concepts around binary compat...

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