Dynamic Class Loading in the Java™ Virtual Machine

Abstract

Class loaders are a powerful mechanism for dynamically loading software components on the Java platform. They are unusual in supporting all of the following features: laziness, type-safe linkage, user-defined extensibility, and multiple communicating namespaces. We present the notion of class loaders and demonstrate some of their interesting uses. In addition, we discuss how to maintain type safety in the presence of user-defined dynamic class loading.