Experimenting dynamic linking with Ada

An approach to achieving dynamic reconfiguration within the framework of Ada1 is described. A technique for introducing a kernel facility for dynamic reconfiguration in Ada is illustrated, and its implementation using the Verdix VADS 5.5 Ada compiling system on a Sun3-120 running the 4.3 BSD Unix operating system is discussed. This experimental kernel allows an Ada program to change its own configuration dynamically, linking new pieces of code at run-time. It is shown how this dynamic facility can be integrated consistently at the Ada language level, without introducing severe inconsistencies with respect to the Standard semantics.