FeatureIDE: Scalable product configuration of variable systems

Abstract

In the last decades, variability management for similar products is one of the main challenges in software systems. In this context, feature models are used to describe the dependencies between reusable common and variable artifacts, called features. However, for large feature models it is a complex task to find a valid feature combination as product configuration. Our Eclipse plug-in FeatureIDE provides several mechanisms, such as information hiding and decision propagation, which support the configuration process to combine the reusable artifacts in various manners. We illustrate the applications of these mechanisms from a user’s point of view.