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Towards a Dynamic Object Model Within Unix Processes

Kell, Stephen (2015) Towards a Dynamic Object Model Within Unix Processes. In: Onward! 2015 2015 ACM International Symposium on New Ideas, New Paradigms, and Reflections on Programming and Software. SPLASH Systems, Programming, and Applications . ACM, New York, USA, pp. 224-239. ISBN 978-1-4503-3688-8. (doi:10.1145/2814228.2814238) (Access to this publication is currently restricted. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:69702)

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Abstract

Programmers face much complexity from the co-existence of "native" (Unix-like) and virtual machine (VM) "managed" run-time environments. Rather than having VMs replace Unix processes, we investigate whether it makes sense for the latter to "become VMs", by evolving Unix's user-level services to subsume those of VMs. We survey the (little-understood) VM-like features in modern Unix, noting common shortcomings: a lack of semantic metadata ("type information") and the inability to bind from objects "back" to their metadata. We describe the design and implementation of a system, liballocs, which adds these capabilities in a highly compatible way, and explore its consequences.

Item Type: Book section
DOI/Identification number: 10.1145/2814228.2814238
Subjects: Q Science > QA Mathematics (inc Computing science)
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Computing, Engineering and Mathematical Sciences > School of Computing
Depositing User: Stephen Kell
Date Deposited: 07 Jan 2019 14:51 UTC
Last Modified: 17 Aug 2022 11:02 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/69702 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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