An Overview of Techniques for Detecting Software Variability Concepts in Source Code

Lozano, Ángela

doi:10.1007/978-3-642-24574-9_19

Cited by 12 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…There are studies on how to address variability by traditional techniques [11,22,46,56], or on how to partially locate and identify domain features, mainly at the code level [8,16,50]. Nevertheless, there is a complete lack of approaches to identify variation points and variants [39] implemented with different techniques in a single variability-rich system. This could be due to the fact that each traditional technique differently supports the implementation of vp-s with variants [39,58].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Identifying and Visualizing Variability in Object-Oriented Variability-Rich Systems

Tërnava

Mortara

Collet

2019

Proceedings of the 23rd International Systems and Software Product Line Conference - Volume A

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In many variability-intensive systems, variability is implemented in code units provided by a host language, such as classes or functions, which do not align well with the domain features. Annotating or creating an orthogonal decomposition of code in terms of features implies extra effort, as well as massive and cumbersome refactoring activities. In this paper, we introduce an approach for identifying and visualizing the variability implementation places within the main decomposition structure of object-oriented code assets in a single variability-rich system. First, we propose to use symmetry, as a common property of some main implementation techniques, such as inheritance or overloading, to identify uniformly these places. We study symmetry in different constructs (e.g., classes), techniques (e.g., subtyping, overloading) and design patterns (e.g., strategy, factory), and we also show how we can use such symmetries to find variation points with variants. We then report on the implementation and application of a toolchain, symfinder, which automatically identifies and visualizes places with symmetry. The publicly available application to several large open-source systems shows that symfinder can help in characterizing code bases that are variability-rich or not, as well as in discerning zones of interest w.r.t. variability. CCS CONCEPTS• Software and its engineering → Software product lines; Object oriented development; Reusability. KEYWORDSIdentifying software variability, visualizing software variability, object-oriented variability-rich systems, tool support for understanding software variability, software product line engineering

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Identifying and Visualizing Variability in Object-Oriented Variability-Rich Systems

Tërnava

Mortara

Collet

2019

Proceedings of the 23rd International Systems and Software Product Line Conference - Volume A

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“…From the set of 63 works, three of them are surveys/state-of-art studies [19,34,40] and two report experiences on adoption of SPL in small and medium enterprises [10,24]. …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Such works review techniques to identify commonalities and variabilities. The paper of Tiarks et al [64] focuses on clone detection in source code, and the paper of Lozano [40] presents an overview on detection of variability concepts in source code. These works maybe served as motivation to other researchers, and can explain the growing number of papers in the last years.…”

Section: Rq1: Maturity and Interest Along Yearsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Feature location for software product line migration

Assunção

Vergílio

2014

Proceedings of the 18th International Software Product Line Conference: Companion Volume for Workshops, Demonstrations and Tool

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Developing software from scratch is a high cost and errorprone activity. A possible solution to reduce time-to-market and produce high quality software is the reuse of existing software. But when the number of features in the system grows, the maintenance becomes more complex. In such cases, to adopt a systematic approach, such as Software Product Line Engineering, is necessary. Existing systems are generally migrated to a product line, allowing systematic reuse of artefacts and easing maintenance. To this end, some approaches have been proposed in the literature in the last years. A mapping of works on this subject and the identification of some research gaps can lead to an improvement of such approaches. This paper describes the main outcomes of a systematic mapping study on the evolution and migration of systems to SPL. The main works found are presented and classified according to adopted strategy, artefacts used, and evaluation conducted. Analysis of the evolution along the past years are also presented. At the end, we summarize some trends and open issues to serve as reference to new researches.

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“…While approaches and techniques have been proposed to partially locate domain features at the code level [3,16], there is no work dealing with the identification of object-oriented variability implementations at the structural level, namely at the level of variation points (vp-s) and variants [14,17]. Contrary to a feature related to the variability domain, a variation point represents one or more locations in code at which variation will occur, while the way that a variation point is going to vary is defined by its variants [7].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%