Recovering Object-Oriented Framework for Software Product Line Reengineering

Abstract

A large number of software product lines (SPL) in practice are not constructed from scratch, but reengineered from legacy variant products. In order to transfer legacy products to SPL core assets, reverse variability analysis should be involved to find commonality and differences among variant artifacts. In this paper we concentrate on the recovery of SPL framework which can be represented by an object-oriented design model with variation points. We propose a semi-automatic SPL framework recovery approach with the assumption that involved legacy products have similar designs and implementations. In this approach, we adopt a bottom-up process based on clone detection and context analysis to identify corresponding mappings among design elements in different products. Then we use a top-down process from class level to method level with some heuristic rules to determine the commonality/variability classification and the variability type for each design element. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of our approach, we conduct a case study on an industrial product line and present comprehensive analysis and discussions on the results.