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Migration from Annotation-Based to Composition-Based Product Lines: Towards a Tool-Driven Process

Authors:
Fabian Benduhn
Reimar Schröter
Andy Kenner
Christopher Kruczek
Thomas Leich
Gunter Saake

Keywords: Software Product Lines; Step-wise Migration; Variabiliy Mechanisms; Implementation Techniques

Abstract:
Software product lines allow a developer to produce similar programs based on a common code base. Two main techniques exist: composition-based and annotation-based approaches. Although composition-based approaches offer potential advantages such as maintainability, in practice mostly annotation-based approaches are used. The main reason hindering the migration of existing projects is the difficulty of the transformation process that can take a lot of time in which maintenance and evolution of the system are put on hold. Thus, for a company, it is hard to estimate the transformation costs and the success is uncertain. As already stated in previous work, a hybrid solution using both approaches may be an adequate solution to overcome this problem. Therefore, we propose a migration concept focusing on technical requirements, such as tool- and language support to reduce the risk during the error-prone migration process. We exemplify the concept by considering the partial migration of a real-world system from preprocessor-based variability to an implementation based on feature-oriented programming. We identify conceptual and tool-based challenges that must be addressed for the practical application. We present technical considerations that must be taken into account for step-wise migration and specific challenges related to our case study.

Pages: 102 to 109

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2016

Publication date: February 21, 2016

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2519-8394

ISBN: 978-1-61208-458-9

Location: Lisbon, Portugal

Dates: from February 21, 2016 to February 25, 2016