Analysis of crosscutting features in Software Product Lines

Abstract

Software Product Lines has emerged as a new technology to develop software product families related to a particular domain. The software products developed by this methodology are based on the combination of a set of common and variable assets. However, in order to combine these assets to build different products, coupling between common and variable parts must be highly reduced. In that sense, crosscutting features make evolution and adaptability of software difficult. In this paper we propose a framework to identify crosscutting features at early stages in order to use aspect-oriented techniques to modularize them and reduce their dependencies. This framework is based on a crosscutting pattern and uses traceability matrices to perform the analysis of crosscutting. Finally, applicability of the framework is shown by identifying crosscutting features in the Arcade Game Maker product line. Copyright 2008 ACM.