On the Feasibility of an AOSD Approach to Linux Kernel Extensions

Previous work presented a domain-specific version of C, called C4. The focus of that work was on introducing new extensions represented as aspects in system software such as the Linux kernel with a focus on readablility, compatibility, performance, and the preservation of existing development workflows. However, other AOSD researchers state that "Linux, as a monolithic system, provides a low number of join-points for aspects and that those available were semantically ambiguous." This worrisome statement motivated to study the feasibility of applying AOSD techniques to refactor existing Linux kernel extensions. To gain insight the AOSD-ness of a large number of configurable options available in the Linux kernel were analyzed and evaluated whether they could be converted into aspects.