Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming

Abstract

Feature modeling has been found very effective for modeling and managing variability in Software Product Lines. The nature of feature models invites, sometimes even requires, the use of global constraints. This paper lays the groundwork for the inclusion of global constraints in automated reasoning on feature models. We present a mapping from extended feature models to constraint logic programming over finite domains, and show that this mapping enables using global constraints on feature attributes, as well as features, for a variety of analysis operations on feature models. We also present performance test results and discuss the benefits of using global constraints. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.