Hot-update method and apparatus

A hot-update apparatus, comprising:

• a receiving unit, configured to obtain, in response to receiving a hot-update instruction by a running program, an update assembly and difference descriptions for describing differences between the update assembly and an existing assembly of the running program, wherein, identical metadata in said update assembly and said existing assembly have identical identifiers;
• a modification determining unit, configured to load said update assembly into memory, and find, in said update assembly, functions which have been modified with respect to the existing assembly according to said difference descriptions;
• a just-in-time compiling unit, configured to perform just-in-time compilation to the modified functions thus found to obtain update native code;
• a running unit, configured to run said update native code in place of corresponding existing native code of said modified functions when said existing native code is required to be run;
• an object finding unit, configured to, if it is determined that it is necessary to modify an access level of a specified method or an access level of a specified field according to said difference descriptions, find a corresponding object of said specified method or a corresponding object of said specified field;
• and
• an attribute modifying unit, configured to make a corresponding modification to an access attribute of the object found by said object finding unit.

A system, comprising one or more processing devices, and one or more non-transitory machine-readable media configured to store instructions that are executable by the one or more processing devices to:

• obtain, in response to receiving a hot-update instruction by a running program, an update assembly and difference descriptions for describing differences between the update assembly and an existing assembly of the running program, wherein, identical metadata in said update assembly and said existing assembly have identical identifiers;
• load said update assembly into memory, and find, in said update assembly, functions which have been modified with respect to the existing assembly according to said difference descriptions;
• perform just-in-time compilation to the modified functions which have been found to obtain update native code;
• run said update native code in place of corresponding existing native code of said modified functions when said existing native code is required to be run;
• determine if it is necessary to modify an access level of a specified method or an access level of a specified field according to said difference descriptions, and if it is determined necessary, find a corresponding object of said specified method or corresponding object of said specified field;
• and
• make a corresponding modification to an access attribute of the object which has been found.