# Brendan Cody-Kenny: Can we recompile a behavioural change into an existing codebase without breaking its neighbours?

Technical Due Diligence for Software M&A https://sub.xiliary.com/p/brendancodykenny

### 2026-11-08 question #research #software-engineering #verification
Can we recompile a behavioural change into an existing codebase without breaking its neighbours?
- Experiment: extract one slide's behaviour into a small runnable script, change it, and patch it back into the production system.
- Check other slides sharing its dependencies, verify contracts, and measure architectural impact.
- The key metric is how much of the production system the author must understand to make a correct change.
- The round-trip compiler is a hypothesis; the slicing, metrics and codemod machinery already exist.

https://sub.xiliary.com/p/brendancodykenny/posts/95/can-we-recompile-a-behavioural-change-into-an-existing