A model for merging different versions of a PSDL program

Abstract

As hardware complexity increases, software complexity increases, and software systems become less maintainable by manual methods. Automated software development methods, like Rapid Prototyping, have served to increase the maintainability of modern software systems, and increase customer participation in the requirements definition process. This makes software systems more maintainable and increases customer satisfaction with the first version of the system. Still, changes are inevitable. The part of the maintenance problem that automated tools currently do not address, is the automatic propagation of changes through multiple versions of the same system. The Prototype System Description Language (PSDL) is a language used exclusively for designing and executing rapid prototypes. This thesis is directed at developing a model for automatically merging two different versions of a PSDL program, providing a method for propagating changes through multiple versions of that program.