A model of refactoring physically and virtually separated features

Kästner, Christian; Apel, Sven; Kuhlemann, Martin

doi:10.1145/1621607.1621632

Cited by 50 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 35 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In [8], Kästner et al derive the features from #ifdef-style preprocessor directives, but this kind of information is missing in our case. Additionally, all of the discussed approaches work on code level and are not applicable to function-block-based models.…”

Section: Library Migrationmentioning

confidence: 89%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Automatic variation-point identification in function-block-based models

Ryssel¹,

Ploennigs²,

Kabitzsch³

2010

Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Generative Programming and Component Engineering

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Function-block-based modeling is often used to develop embedded systems, particularly as system variants can be developed rapidly from existing modules. Generative approaches can simplify the handling and development of the resulting high variety of functionblock-based models. But they often require the development of new generic models that do not utilize existing ones. Reusing existing models will significantly decrease the effort to apply generative programming. This work introduces an automatic approach to recognize variants in a set of models and identify the variation points and their dependencies within variants. As result it offers automatically generated feature models and ICCL content to regenerate the given variants.

show abstract

Section: Library Migrationmentioning

confidence: 89%

“…The second kind of implication originates from one-toone relations between concepts (lines [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18]. If there is only one upper neighbor, the edge not only represents an implication mc ⇒ mc,up and mc ⇒ mp,up, respectively, but also an option: if mc,up, mp,up exists in a variant, then mc will be selectable.…”

Section: Case (B)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Automatic variation-point identification in function-block-based models

Ryssel¹,

Ploennigs²,

Kabitzsch³

2010

Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Generative Programming and Component Engineering

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…All these fine-grained annotations (and several more) would be possible to interpret as disciplined, but then the tools that work on the resulting AST will be more complex. Some tools benefit from disallowing annotations on expressions or parameters, because this way they have to consider fewer annotated code fragments and thus fewer transformation patterns [22]. One goal of our analysis is to find out whether our conservative definition of disciplined annotations is sufficient in practice or whether some or all fine-grained annotations should be considered as disciplined as well, because software engineers use them frequently.…”

Section: Defining Disciplined Annotationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although this is not a problem for tools that analyze a single preprocessed variant of the source code (post-cpp), such as a compiler or many static analysis tools, pre-cpp tools have difficulties handling arbitrary text-based annotations. These difficulties are widely acknowledged in prior research on code refactoring [12,13,14,36,38], transformation [1,4,22], slicing [37], or product-line aware analysis tools [3,20,23,31]. Despite significant research effort (e.g., [12,14,36,38]) and significant improvements, refactoring engines of IDEs such as Eclipse and Visual Studio still struggle with certain kinds of annotation in pre-cpp code.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Restricting developers to disciplined annotations makes it much easier to build proper tools and to ensure correctness and completeness of the mechanisms involved. For example, we can parse source code including disciplined annotations in one step and propagate annotations to elements of an abstract syntax tree that we use as input for concern refactoring or concern management tools [22]. As another example, when developers annotate only entire functions, refactoring tools can safely transform function bodies or rename all alternative implementations of a function without loss of variability information.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Analyzing the discipline of preprocessor annotations in 30 million lines of C code

Liebig

Kästner

Apel

2011

Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Aspect-Oriented Software Development

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The C preprocessor cpp is a widely used tool for implementing variable software. It enables programmers to express variable code (which may even crosscut the entire implementation) with conditional compilation. The C preprocessor relies on simple text processing and is independent of the host language (C, C++, Java, and so on). Languageindependent text processing is powerful and expressiveprogrammers can make all kinds of annotations in the form of #ifdefs-but can render unpreprocessed code difficult to process automatically by tools, such as refactoring, concern management, and variability-aware type checking. We distinguish between disciplined annotations, which align with the underlying source-code structure, and undisciplined annotations, which do not align with the structure and hence complicate tool development. This distinction raises the question of how frequently programmers use undisciplined annotations and whether it is feasible to change them to disciplined annotations to simplify tool development and to enable programmers to use a wide variety of tools in the first place. By means of an analysis of 40 medium-sized to large-sized C programs, we show empirically that programmers use cpp mostly in a disciplined way: about 84 % of all annotations respect the underlying source-code structure. Furthermore, we analyze the remaining undisciplined annotations, identify patterns, and discuss how to transform them into a disciplined form.

show abstract

Composing annotations without regret? Practical experiences using FeatureC

Krüger

Pinnecke

Kenner³

et al. 2017

Softw Pract Exp

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Software product lines enable developers to derive similar products from a common code base. Existing implementation techniques can be categorized as composition-based and annotation-based approaches, with both approaches promising complementary benefits. However, annotation-based approaches are commonly used in practice despite composition allowing physical separation of features and, thus, improving traceability and maintenance. A main hindrance to migrate annotated systems toward a composition-based product line is the challenging and time-consuming transformation task. For a company, it is difficult to predict the corresponding costs, and a successful outcome is uncertain. To overcome such problems, a solution proposed by the previous work is to use a hybrid approach, utilizing composition and annotation simultaneously. Based on this idea, we introduce a stepwise migration process from annotation-based toward composition-based approaches to lower the adoption barrier of composition. This process itself is independent of used implementation techniques and enables developers to incrementally migrate toward composition. We support our approach with detailed examples by partially migrating a real-world system.In detail, we describe the following: (1) our migration process, (2) its application on a real-world system, and (3) discuss practical challenges we face. We implemented the proposed approach and show that appropriate tool support helps to migrate toward composition-based product lines. Based on the case study, we show that the hybrid product lines work correctly and can compete with the performance of the original annotated system. However, the results also illustrate open issues that have to be solved to apply such migrations in practice.

show abstract

A model of refactoring physically and virtually separated features

Cited by 50 publications

References 35 publications

Automatic variation-point identification in function-block-based models

Automatic variation-point identification in function-block-based models

Analyzing the discipline of preprocessor annotations in 30 million lines of C code

Composing annotations without regret? Practical experiences using FeatureC

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About