Efficient recompilation of module interfaces in a software development environment
Hausi A. Müller, Robert T. Hood, Ken Kennedy · ACM SIGPLAN Notices · 1987
This paper presents global interface analysis algorithms that analyze and limit the effects of an editing change to a basic interface of a software system. The algorithms improve on the deficiencies of the traditional compilation rule found in strongly-typed, separately-compiled programming languages, which often forces the recompilation of modules that are not at all affected by a change to a basic interface. The algorithms assume a software development environment that provides efficient access to the compilation dependencies and the module interfaces of the components being implemented. The algorithms are designed to operate on recursive compilation dependencies since separate compilation of recursive inter-module dependencies can easily be implemented in such an environment.