Evolving software product lines with aspects: an empirical study on design stability

Software product lines (SPLs) enable modular, large-scale reuse through a software architecture addressing multiple core and varying features. To reap the benefits of SPLs, their designs need to be stable. Design stability encompasses the sustenance of the product line's modularity properties in the presence of changes to both the core and varying features. It is usually assumed that aspect-oriented programming promotes better modularity and changeability of product lines. However, there is no empirical evidence on its efficacy to prolong design stability of product lines in realistic development scenarios. This paper reports a quantitative study that evolves two SPLs to assess various facets of design stability of aspect-oriented implementations. Our investigation focused upon a multi-perspective analysis of the evolving product lines in terms of modularity, change propagation, and feature interaction. General Terms Measurement, Design, Experimentation. Keywords Product lines, a...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: ICSE
• Authors: Alessandro Garcia, Cláudio Sant'Anna, Eduardo Figueiredo, Fabiano Cutigi Ferrari, Fernando Castor Filho, Francisco Dantas, Mario Monteiro, Nélio Cacho, Sérgio Soares, Safoora Shakil Khan, Uirá Kulesza
• Keywords: ICSE 2008, Software Engineering