Trustworthy Systems

Feature interactions, products, and composition

Authors

Peter Hoefner, Don Batory and Jongwook Kim

Universitaet Augsburg

NICTA

University of Texas at Austin

Abstract

The relationship between feature modules and feature interactions is not well-understood. To explain classic examples of feature interactions, we show that features are not only composed sequentially, but also by cross-product and interaction operations that heretofore were implicit in the literature. Using the Colored IDE (CIDE) tool as our starting point, we (a) present a formal model of these operations, (b) show how it connects and explains previously unrelated results in Feature Oriented Software Development (FOSD), and (c) describe a tool, based on our formalism, that demonstrates how changes in composed documents can be back-propagated to their original feature module definitions, thereby improving FOSD tooling.

BibTeX Entry

  @inproceedings{Hfner_BK_11,
    address          = {Portland, OR, United States},
    author           = {H\"ofner, Peter and Batory, Don and Kim, Jongwook},
    booktitle        = {Generative Programming and Component Engineering (GPCE'11)},
    month            = oct,
    pages            = {13--22},
    paperurl         = {https://trustworthy.systems/publications/nicta_full_text/5137.pdf},
    title            = {Feature Interactions, Products, and Composition},
    year             = {2011}
  }

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