Bridging the gap between clone-and-own and software product lines

peer-reviewed
Erstveröffentlichung
2021-05Authors
Kehrer, Timo
Thüm, Thomas
Schultheiß, Alexander
Bittner, Paul Maximilian
Beitrag zu einer Konferenz
Published in
2021 IEEE/ACM 43nd International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) ; 2021 (2021)
Faculties
Fakultät für Ingenieurwissenschaften, Informatik und PsychologieInstitutions
Institut für Softwaretechnik und ProgrammiersprachenExternal cooperations
Humboldt-Universität zu BerlinDocument version
accepted versionConference
2021 IEEE/ACM 43rd International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), 2021-05-23 - 2021-05-29, Madrid (online only)
Abstract
Software is often released in multiple variants to meet all customer requirements. While software product lines address this need by advocating the development of an integrated software platform, practitioners frequently rely on ad-hoc reuse based on a principle which is known as clone-and-own. This practice avoids high up-front investments, as new variants of a software family are created by simply copying and adapting an existing variant, but maintenance costs explode once a critical number of variants is reached. With our research project VariantSync, we aim to bridge the gap between clone-and-own and product lines by combining the minimal overhead and flexibility of clone-and-own with the systematic handling of variability in software product lines. The key idea is to transparently integrate product-line concepts with variant management facilities known from version control systems in order to automatically synchronize a set of evolving variants. We believe that VariantSync has the potential to change the way how practitioners develop multi-variant software systems for which it is hard to foresee which variants will be added in the future.
Subject headings
[GND]: Softwareproduktion | Softwareentwicklung | Softwarekonfigurationsverwaltung[LCSH]: Software engineering | Computer software | Software configuration management
[Free subject headings]: Software Product Lines | Clone-and-Own | Feature Traceability
[DDC subject group]: DDC 000 / Computer science, information & general works
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Show full item recordDOI & citation
Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://dx.doi.org/10.18725/OPARU-35726
Kehrer, Timo et al. (2021): Bridging the gap between clone-and-own and software product lines. Open Access Repositorium der Universität Ulm und Technischen Hochschule Ulm. http://dx.doi.org/10.18725/OPARU-35726
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