Identifying and Mapping Implemented Variabilities in Java and C++ Systems using symfinder

Abstract

Variability is present in most modern object-oriented softwareintensive systems, despite that they commonly do not follow a product line approach. In these systems, variability is implicit and hardly documented as it is implemented by different traditional mechanisms, namely inheritance, overloading, or design patterns. This hampers variability management as automatic identification of variation points (vp-s) with variants is very difficult. symfinder is a symmetry-based tooled approach that enables automatic identification of potential vp-s with variants in such systems. Then, it visualizes them relying on their density in code assets. From the Java-only version presented at SPLC'2019, we present here several notable improvements. They concern an added support for C ++ systems, the identification of vp-s implemented by Decorator and Template pattern instances, an enhanced visualization (e.g., to display all variants, and package coloring), as well as automation of the mapping of potential vp-s to domain features. CCS CONCEPTS • Software and its engineering → Software product lines; Object oriented development; Reusability.

Extending the identification of object-oriented variability implementations using usage relationships

“…In these approaches, features are either required to be known in advance or to be identified through reengineering a set of clone-and-own or legacy software systems into a product line. Unlike them, our recent tooled approach named symfinder [26,27,37] focuses on identifying the variability implementations in single codebase object-oriented systems. It provides automatic identification and visualization of potential vp-s with variants in code assets of a Java or C ++ -based variability-rich system 3 .…”

“…symfinder has been applied to several Java and C ++ variability-rich systems [26,37], showing that it can successfully identify the potential variability in their code assets. It also helped to comprehend this variability by using the generated visualization.…”

“…It also helped to comprehend this variability by using the generated visualization. Moreover, an application on the ArgoUML-SPL [22] has demonstrated that a large part of the identified vp-s and variants by symfinder actually implement the ArgoUML's reverse-engineered domain features [26]. However, as more experiments and applications were conducted with symfinder, two issues also appeared.…”

“…On its side, symfinder provides automatic identification and visualization of potential vp-s with variants in object-oriented code assets, with support for the Java and C ++ languages [26,27]. Its identification approach of potential vp-s with variants is using the property of symmetry in their implementation techniques, for example, inheritance defines a substitution symmetry between the immutable part of the superclass (the vp) and the possible changes in its subclasses (the variants).…”

“…The aim is to make zones with many symmetries easily distinguishable. symfinder has been successfully applied to several real Java and C ++ variability-rich systems [26,28,37], showing that a large part of the identified potential vp-s and variants actually implemented domain features [26], that is, they are actual vp-s with variants.…”