Dynamic updates of mobile apps using JavaScript

Abstract: Updates are a natural part of the life cycle of an application. The traditional way of updating an application by stopping it, replacing it with the new version and restarting it is lacking in many ways. There have been previous research in the field of dynamic software updates (DSU) that attempt to salvage this problem by updating the app while running. Most of the previous research have focused on static languages like C and Java, research with dynamic languages have been lacking. This thesis takes advantage of the dynamic features of JavaScript in order to allow for dynamic updates of applications for mobile devices. The solution is implemented and used to answer questions about how correctness can be ensured and what state transfer needs to be manually written by a programmer. The conclusion is that most failures that occur as the result of an update and is in need of a manually written state transfer can be put into one of three categories. To verify correctness of an update tests for these types of failures should be performed.