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Search-Based Variability Model Synthesis from Variant Configurations

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Handbook of Re-Engineering Software Intensive Systems into Software Product Lines

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Abstract

The parallel maintenance of independent system variants, developed to supply a wide range of customer-specific demands, is a complex activity. To alleviate this problem and ease the creation of new products, the consolidation of such variants into a Software Product Line (SPL) is an effective solution. For this, a fundamental step is to construct a variability model that represents the combinations of features of all the existing variants. However, the process of extracting an SPL from independent variants, and consequently constructing a variability model, is acknowledged as costly and error-prone. Instead of starting from scratch, many approaches have been proposed for reverse engineering variability models, but they have two limitations. These approaches usually optimize a single objective that does not allow software engineers to consider design trade-offs and do not exploit knowledge from implementation artifacts. This chapter presents our approach to address these limitations. Our approach applies a multi-objective optimization strategy and uses source code dependencies to reverse engineer variability models. The resulting model not only represents the desired feature combinations but are also well-formed regarding source code dependencies, i.e., variability safe. The approach, using two multi-objective evolutionary algorithms, namely NSGA-II and SPEA2, and a single-objective algorithm was evaluated with twelve subject systems. For comparisons, we rely on widely adopted performance indicators. The results indicate that the performance of the multi-objective algorithms is similar in most cases, and that both clearly outperform the single-objective algorithm. Also, the trade-off among different solutions is important to support engineers during decision making.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://www.splot-research.org/.

  2. 2.

    http://www.inf.ufpr.br/gres/IS/MORevEngFMs.zip.

  3. 3.

    http://cs.gmu.edu/~eclab/projects/ecj/.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Brazilian Agencies CAPES: 7126/2014-00; CNPq: 453678/2014-9, 305358/2012-0, 408356/2018-9 and 305968/2018-1; and the Carlos Chagas Filho Foundation for Supporting Research in the State of Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ), under the PDR-10 program, grant 202073/2020. This work is partially funded Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) grant RGPIN-2017-05421.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

    Wesley K. G. Assunção

  2. Johannes Kepler University of Linz, Linz, Austria

    Wesley K. G. Assunção

  3. Dinf, Federal University of Paraná, Curitiba, Brazil

    Silvia R. Vergilio

  4. École de Technologie Supérieure, Universite du Québec, Montreal, QC, Canada

    Roberto E. Lopez-Herrejon

  5. ISF, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany

    Lukas Linsbauer

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  1. Wesley K. G. Assunção
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  2. Silvia R. Vergilio
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  3. Roberto E. Lopez-Herrejon
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  4. Lukas Linsbauer
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Wesley K. G. Assunção .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. École de Technologie Supérieure, Universite du Québec, Montreal, QC, Canada

    Roberto E. Lopez-Herrejon

  2. Tecnalia, Basque Research and Technology Alliance (BRTA), Derio, Spain

    Jabier Martinez

  3. Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Johannes Kepler University of Linz, Linz, Austria

    Wesley Klewerton Guez Assunção

  4. Sorbonne Universités & CNRS-LIP6, Paris, Paris, France

    Tewfik Ziadi

  5. IRISA-Inria, Institut Universitaire de France (IUF) & University of Rennes 1, Rennes, France

    Mathieu Acher

  6. Departamento de Informática, Federal University of Parana (UFPR), Curitiba, Brazil

    Silvia Vergilio

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Assunção, W.K.G., Vergilio, S.R., Lopez-Herrejon, R.E., Linsbauer, L. (2023). Search-Based Variability Model Synthesis from Variant Configurations. In: Lopez-Herrejon, R.E., Martinez, J., Guez Assunção, W.K., Ziadi, T., Acher, M., Vergilio, S. (eds) Handbook of Re-Engineering Software Intensive Systems into Software Product Lines. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11686-5_5

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