No abstract

We address the problem of automating 1) the analysis of existing similar model variants and 2) migrating them into a software product line. Our approach, named MoVa2PL, considers the identification of variability and commonality in model variants, as well as the extraction of a CVL-compliant Model-based Software Product Line (MSPL) from the features identified on these variants. MoVa2PL builds on a generic representation of models making it suitable to any MOF-based models. We apply our approach on variants of the open source ArgoUML UML modeling tool as well as on variants of an Inflight Entertainment System. Evaluation with these large and complex case studies contributed to show how our feature identification with structural constraints discovery and the MSPL generation process are implemented to make the approach valid (i.e., the extracted software product line can be used to regenerate all variants considered) and sound (i.e., derived variants which did not exist are at least structurally valid).

Abstract-Adopting Software Product Line (SPL) engineering principles demands a high up-front investment. Bottom-Up Technologies for Reuse (BUT4Reuse) is a generic and extensible tool aimed to leverage existing similar software products in order to help in extractive SPL adoption. The envisioned users are 1) SPL adopters and 2) Integrators of techniques and algorithms to provide automation in SPL adoption activities. We present the methodology it implies for both types of users and we present the validation studies that were already conducted. BUT4Reuse tool and source code are publicly available under the EPL license.

Feature location is a traceability recovery activity to identify the implementation elements associated to a characteristic of a system. Besides its relevance for software maintenance of a single system, feature location in a collection of systems received a lot of attention as a first step to re-engineer system variants (created through clone-and-own) into a Software Product Line (SPL). In this context, the objective is to unambiguously identify the boundaries of a feature inside a family of systems to later create reusable assets from these implementation elements. Among all the case studies in the SPL literature, variants derived from ArgoUML SPL stands out as the most used one. However, the use of different settings, or the omission of relevant information (e.g., the exact configurations of the variants or the way the metrics are calculated), makes it difficult to reproduce or benchmark the different feature location techniques even if the same ArgoUML SPL is used. With the objective to foster the research area on feature location, we provide a set of common scenarios using ArgoUML SPL and a set of utils to obtain metrics based on the results of existing and novel feature location techniques.