SURGEON: a packager for dynamically reconfigurable distributed applications

This paper describes a tool called SURGEON that helps programmers prepare software to be dynamically reconfigured. SURGEON is made possible by combining results from both dynamic reconfiguration of distributed applications and software packaging. Currently, dynamic reconfiguration environments allow programmers to modify the implementation of their application modules, the structure of the application and the mapping of that structure onto a distributed architecture, all while the application is running. But these environments require programmers to adapt their software to be suitable for reconfiguration. In contrast, recent work in the automatic preparation of software for use in a distributed execution environment-a task called packaging-shows that it is possible to partially automate the generation of interfacing software given abstract descriptions of the components and of the desired application geometry. SURGEON merges these results so that programmers have the opportunity to dynamically reconfigure their applications but without the overhead of having to adapt the software manually