Automatic configuration of dynamically alterable object oriented systems

Customization is a powerful tool, but to be truly useful its application must require a minimum of expertise and effort from the programmer. While many programming languages provide support for modularity and encapsulation, it is object-oriented languages with their associated object constructor/destructor mechanisms which provide the key to automating customizations of complex system specifications. We outline a scheme for such a configuration mechanism in the context of the PEACE system, a dynamically alterable object-oriented parallel operating system. Our mechanism is largely transparent to the user, using the C++ programming language and its associated object constructors and destructors to generate an initial version of system configuration information from a combination of user-specified parameters and system defaults. This initial configuration information is automatically installed at system invocation, and is also dynamically alterable at runtime. The information is used by the PEACE system and its applications to guide dynamic system alterations such as loading and/or garbage-collecting of system components on demand,but the same approach is also applicable in other contexts