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Software product lines enable developers to derive similar products from a common code base. Existing implementation techniques can be categorized as composition-based and annotation-based approaches, with both approaches promising complementary benefits. However, annotation-based approaches are commonly used in practice despite composition allowing physical separation of features and, thus, improving traceability and maintenance. A main hindrance to migrate annotated systems toward a composition-based product line is the challenging and time-consuming transformation task. For a company, it is difficult to predict the corresponding costs, and a successful outcome is uncertain. To overcome such problems, a solution proposed by the previous work is to use a hybrid approach, utilizing composition and annotation simultaneously. Based on this idea, we introduce a stepwise migration process from annotation-based toward composition-based approaches to lower the adoption barrier of composition. This process itself is independent of used implementation techniques and enables developers to incrementally migrate toward composition. We support our approach with detailed examples by partially migrating a real-world system.In detail, we describe the following: (1) our migration process, (2) its application on a real-world system, and (3) discuss practical challenges we face. We implemented the proposed approach and show that appropriate tool support helps to migrate toward composition-based product lines. Based on the case study, we show that the hybrid product lines work correctly and can compete with the performance of the original annotated system. However, the results also illustrate open issues that have to be solved to apply such migrations in practice.

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