1. A method comprising: receiving an incremental update for a Rule Compiled Data Structure (RCDS), the RCDS representing a set of rules for packet classification, the RCDS utilized for packet classification by an active search process; maintaining a housekeeping tree, an augmented representation of the RCDS including additional information of the RCDS for determining updates for the RCDS; using the housekeeping tree to create a change list; and atomically updating the RCDS based on the incremental update received, the change list created for atomically updating the RCDS from the perspective of the active search process utilizing the RCDS.