The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has launched an effort to help developers safely update old software without the need to rewrite the code entirely.
DARPA said Thursday it will use novel concepts to allow for incremental updates in legacy software under the Verified Security and Performance Enhancement of Large Legacy Software or V-SPELLS program. The agency will leverage V-SPELLS to address the compatibility problem between legacy infrastructure and newer software components.
V-SPELLS aims to study the software components of large legacy codebases, develop tools that can safely and fully augment legacy software and create standard methods to address related technical issues. The effort will also explore concepts in domain-specific computer languages.
