Model-driven template metaprogramming

Abstract

The development and maintenance of hardware/software Systems with a high level of variability is a complex task. At IVV Automação, LDA the video surveillance system is implemented as a software product line that exploit the common component features that compose the video surveillance system family of products. In order to manage the system variability at code level, the IVV developers use C++ template metaprogramming (TMP). Although, TMP presents advantages in variability code management at compile time, the syntax and idioms of TMP are esoteric compared to conventional C++ programming, and TMP can be difficult to understand. In this paper we propose a novel approach to implement and maintain TMP code using a model-driven tool, that employs Template Markup Language with a XSLT transformer to automatic generate and maintain TMP code.