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Extending Boolean Variability Relationship Extraction to Multi-valued Software Descriptions

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Handbook of Re-Engineering Software Intensive Systems into Software Product Lines

Abstract

Extracting variability information from software product descriptions is crucial when reverse engineering a software product line, e.g., for variability model synthesis. Existing methods are predominantly designed for feature-oriented product lines, where products are described by the set of distinguishable features they implement, and variability information may be expressed by logical relationships over these features. However, limits of such boolean feature-based variability modeling approaches have been highlighted, notably regarding their expressive power. In this chapter, we take a step towards more complex variability extraction and focus on extracting non-boolean variability relationships from multi-valued software descriptions. We first analyze software descriptions, variability relationships and extraction methods used in the boolean case. We attract attention to a knowledge engineering framework supporting a sound and complete feature-based variability relationship extraction method. The benefits of this framework include several extensions enabling to take into account more complex datasets than boolean ones. We explore one of these extensions to extend the traditional boolean extraction method and handle variability relationships including both boolean features and attribute values that can be used to synthesize extended variability models.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://robocode.sourceforge.io/.

  2. 2.

    http://robowiki.net/, last access July 2019.

  3. 3.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Software_comparisons, last accessed July 2019

  4. 4.

    https://github.com/xdevroey/jhipster-dataset/tree/master/v3.6.1

  5. 5.

    https://github.com/but4reuse/RobocodeSPL_teaching

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Université de Montréal, Montreal, QC, Canada

    Jessie Galasso

  2. LIRMM, University of Montpellier, CNRS, Montpellier, France

    Marianne Huchard

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  1. Jessie Galasso
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  2. Marianne Huchard
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Correspondence to Jessie Galasso .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. École de Technologie Supérieure, Universite du Québec, Montreal, QC, Canada

    Roberto E. Lopez-Herrejon

  2. Tecnalia, Basque Research and Technology Alliance (BRTA), Derio, Spain

    Jabier Martinez

  3. Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Johannes Kepler University of Linz, Linz, Austria

    Wesley Klewerton Guez Assunção

  4. Sorbonne Universités & CNRS-LIP6, Paris, Paris, France

    Tewfik Ziadi

  5. IRISA-Inria, Institut Universitaire de France (IUF) & University of Rennes 1, Rennes, France

    Mathieu Acher

  6. Departamento de Informática, Federal University of Parana (UFPR), Curitiba, Brazil

    Silvia Vergilio

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Galasso, J., Huchard, M. (2023). Extending Boolean Variability Relationship Extraction to Multi-valued Software Descriptions. In: Lopez-Herrejon, R.E., Martinez, J., Guez Assunção, W.K., Ziadi, T., Acher, M., Vergilio, S. (eds) Handbook of Re-Engineering Software Intensive Systems into Software Product Lines. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11686-5_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11686-5_6

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