SERVICING SOFTWARE THROUGH VERSIONING

Software typically changes over its useful lifetime. New versions of software are created to change or improve functionality, to add functionality, to correct coding errors, improve performance, to adapt to new hardware and for many other well-known reasons. The process of delivering new versions of software to users is called servicing the software. The operating system decides which version(s) of a piece of software satisfy dependencies of other software by creation of a context. The context may be used to organize and manage versions of software, to declare activation policies concerning the use of different versions of software and to service the versioned software. The context may include an activation service that maintains and manages resolution polices, resolves dependencies, constructs the environment in which an application runs and initiates the running of the software.