Abstractions for Component-Based Programming with Dynamic Linking

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 COM and Java, respectively. This paper considers a set of abstractions for type-safe component-based programming that supports shared libraries and dynamic linking, as well as circular import dependencies (recursive modules). The core language requirements of the abstractions are compatible with programming languages such as Java