Patent ID: 7290252

Claim:
A method for building computer software, comprising the steps of: executing a first build process, said first build process binding an application program to a program library and recording a first signature of said program library at the time of said binding step in the header of said application program, wherein said first signature uniquely identifies a version of said program library; subsequently executing a second build process, said second build process: (a) automatically comparing said first signature with a plurality of supported signatures of said program library, each of said plurality of supported signatures corresponding to a different respective supported version of said program library, wherein the plurality of supported signatures include the current signature and one or more additional supported signatures from previously built versions of said program library, each said signature is a hash function of said program library's externally accessible procedure names for the different respective supported version of said program library, and the plurality of supported signatures are listed in the header of said program library; (b) automatically determining whether to re-build said application program based on results of said automatically comparing step, said automatically determining step determining to re-build said application program if said first signature does not match any of said plurality of supported signatures of said program library; and (c) automatically re-building said application program responsive to a determination made by said automatically determining step.