Wired

Researchers at University College London (UCL) have developed MuScalpel, a software tool they say is capable of automatically isolating the code of a feature in one program and "transplanting" it into another program. Research team leader Mark Harman says that like an organ transplant, a code transplant has a chance of being "rejected" by the new "host." However, because the system is automated, it can retry the transplant, hundreds or thousands of times if necessary, until it gets it right. To demonstrate the new system, Harman's team used MuScalpel to transplant the H.264 video codec from x264 into VLC media player. The automated system was able to complete the task in 26 hours, whereas VLC's manual addition of the codec took 20 days. To read further, please visit http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-07/30/code-organ-transplant-software-myscalpel.