Verification strategies for feature-oriented software product lines

Abstract

Highly-customizable software systems in form of software product lines are becoming increasingly relevant for safety-critical systems, in which the correctness of software is a major concern. To ensure the correct behavior of a software product line, each product can be verified in isolation—however, this strategy quickly becomes infeasible for a large number of products. In this paper, we propose proof plans, a novel strategy for verifying feature-oriented software product lines based on partial proofs. Our technique splits the verification task into small proofs that can be reused across method variants, which gives rise to a wider spectrum of verification strategies for software product lines. We describe applications of our technique and evaluate one of them on a case study by comparing it with established verification strategies.