Design pattern support based on the source code annotations and feature models

Abstract

Nowadays there exist many approaches to support design pattern instantiation, evolution, etc., but most of the approaches focus mainly at the design level (i.e. model). By the transition to the source code level the pattern instances become almost invisible in the huge amount of source code lines. The goal of this paper is to present our method supporting design pattern instantiation, evolution and identification in the source code. The method is based on source code annotations and feature models of individual patterns. The method does not require a manual annotation of the source code by a human, instead the method works on the idea of architectural and design information propagation and expansion from higher levels of abstraction (i.e. models) into the source code. In this paper we also present a method defining how to connect the necessary knowledge to the model and the source code. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.