Affiliations: Department of Computer Science, Mississippi State
University, Mississippi State, MS 39762, U.S.A. | Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering,
P.O. Box 116200, 336B Larsen Hall, Gainesville, FL, 32611, U.S.A.
Abstract: Software development as an enterprise is at a critical place in
history. We are now developing needs for software faster than we can develop
solutions. The future of software engineering is in providing computer-aided
tools for automating as much of the evolution process as possible, so we can
hope to meet the software needs of the future. Our argument is that software
should not be built and then maintained, but should be evolved, from the first
requirements analysis, to system retirement. If we build software for
evolution, it is generally easier to make changes to that software, whether
they are corrective, adaptive, or perfective. This paper outlines a method of
applying changes to abstract types that extends a previous change-merging
method for executable prototypes written in the Prototype System Description
Language (PSDL). PSDL prototypes consist of a set of operators and a set of
abstract data types. Previous work focused on merging changes to PSDL
prototypes consisting of only operators. Our current work is aimed at providing
a model for merging changes to PSDL types as well, thus completing the change
merging method for complete prototypes. The model outlined in this paper
reflects our latest results in this endeavor.
Keywords: Change merging, program integration, abstract data types, classes, software evolution, software automation, multiple inheritance
