Flexibility to adapt to different applications is a key requirement of modern operating systems. We have explored the use of meta-objects and reflection as a means to write adaptable system software. The paper discusses the Apertos operating system, that uses these techniques. It outlines how meta-objects help to support flexibility and how we have implemented the concepts, and gives some performance figures.

This paper proposes a methodology for making low-level system code of operating systems be replaceable at runtime. Our approach is to use concurrent objects as a basic programming unit for low-level system programs. To realize the different need for each type of system code and to execute these concurrent objects sufficiently efficient, we use a combination of dedicated system service layers and other implementation techniques. System service layers provide the most suitable primitive operations for each concurrent object. Under our programming model for low-level system code, which we call SCONE, it is possible to program low-level system code without hazardous operations such as explicit synchronization, direct scheduler manipulation, etc. We present the implementation of our methodology on the Apertos operating system and demonstrate its efficiency with performance evaluation.