Configuring designs for reuse

Abstract

The main problem in developing soflware product fiu-nilies is how to share effort and reuse parts of design and implementation while providing variation of features and capabilities in the products. We discuss the mechanisms that are commonly used to achieve reuse and sharing in product families, and the kind of variance each is best suited for. Our analysis motivates a need for a new mechanism to deal with ad hoc variation of features found in different members of a family. We argue that higher level abstraction and parametrization techniques are not well suited for this task. We propose an alternative approach that enables sufficiently detailed designs for every variant and at the same time achieves a level of design reuse without making designs unnecessarily complex or implementations inefficient.

Eliminating redundancies with a "composition with adaptation" meta-programming technique

“…Weaknesses: There are well-known problems with understanding programs heavily instrumented with macros [7] and metaprograms in general. XVCL meta-components also contain code instrumented with commands.…”

“…Macros handle variant features only at the implementation level, which causes well-known problems with understanding programs instrumented with macros [7]. Even though XVCL commands, like macros, instrument programs for change, capabilities of XVCL in handling variants reach far beyond the capabilities of macro systems.…”