Intention-Based Integration of Software VariantsTechnical Track
Cloning is a simple way to create new variants of a system. While cheap at first, it increases the maintenance cost in the long term. Eventually, cloned variants need to be integrated into a configurable platform. Such an integration is challenging: it involves merging the usual code improvements between the variants, and also integrating the variable code (features) into the platform. Thus, variant integration differs from traditional software merging, which does not produce or organize configurable code, but creates a single system that cannot be configured into variants. In practice, variant integration requires fine-grained code edits, performed in multiple iterations. Unfortunately, little tool support exists for integrating cloned variants. In this work, we show that fine-grained code edits needed for integration can be alleviated by a small set of integration intentions—domain-specific actions declared over code snippets controlling the integration. Developers can interactively explore the integration space by declaring (or revoking) intentions on code elements. We contribute the intentions (e.g., ‘keep functionality’ or ‘keep as a configurable feature’) and the IDE tool INCLINE, which implements the intentions and five editable views that visualize the integration process and allow declaring intentions producing a configurable integrated platform. In a series of experiments, we evaluated the completeness of the proposed intentions, the correctness and performance of INCLINE, and the benefits of using intentions for variant integration. The experiments show that INCLINE can handle complex integration tasks, that views help to navigate code, and that it consistently reduces mistakes made by developers during variant integration.
Intention-Based Integration of Software Variants (doc.pdf) | 437KiB |
Fri 31 MayDisplayed time zone: Eastern Time (US & Canada) change
11:00 - 12:30 | Software Product LinesDemonstrations / Technical Track / Papers at Van-Horne Chair(s): Shahar Maoz Tel Aviv University | ||
11:00 20mTalk | Intention-Based Integration of Software VariantsTechnical Track Technical Track Max Lillack University of Leipzig, Ştefan Stănciulescu ABB Corporate Research, Switzerland, Wilhelm Hedman , Thorsten Berger Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden / University of Gothenburg, Sweden, Andrzej Wąsowski IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark Pre-print File Attached | ||
11:20 20mTalk | Supporting the Statistical Analysis of Variability ModelsTechnical Track Technical Track Ruben Heradio UNED (Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia), David Fernandez-Amoros UNED (Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia), Christoph Mayr-Dorn Johannes Kepler University Linz, Alexander Egyed | ||
11:40 20mTalk | xLineMapper: A Product Line Feature-Architecture-Implementation Mapping ToolsetDemos Demonstrations Cuong Cu Cybersource Corporation, Xin Ye California State University San Marcos, Yongjie Zheng California State University San Marcos | ||
12:00 20mTalk | Multifaceted Automated Analyses for Variability-Intensive Embedded SystemsTechnical Track Technical Track Sami Lazreg Visteon Electronics and Universite Cote d Azur, Maxime Cordy SnT, University of Luxembourg, Philippe Collet University of Nice, Patrick Heymans University of Namur, Sébastien Mosser Université du Québec à Montréal Pre-print | ||
12:20 10mTalk | Discussion Period Papers |