Evolving software product lines with aspects: an empirical study on design stability
Abstract
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.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{Figueiredo-al:ICSE08,
author = {Eduardo Figueiredo and
N{\'{e}}lio Cacho and
Cl{\'{a}}udio Sant'Anna and
Mario Monteiro and
Uir{\'{a}} Kulesza and
Alessandro Garcia and
S{\'{e}}rgio Soares and
Fabiano Cutigi Ferrari and
Safoora Shakil Khan and
Fernando Castor Filho and
Francisco Dantas},
title = {Evolving software product lines with aspects: an empirical study on design stability},
booktitle = {ICSE},
pages = {261--270},
publisher = {{ACM}},
year = {2008},
}