FeatureC++: on the symbiosis of feature-oriented and aspect-oriented programming

  • Authors:

  • Sven Apel;Thomas Leich;Marko Rosenmüller;Gunter Saake

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Computer Science, University of Magdeburg, Germany;Department of Computer Science, University of Magdeburg, Germany;Department of Computer Science, University of Magdeburg, Germany;Department of Computer Science, University of Magdeburg, Germany

  • Venue:
  • GPCE'05 Proceedings of the 4th international conference on Generative Programming and Component Engineering
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

This paper presents FeatureC++, a novel language extension to C++ that supports Feature-Oriented Programming (FOP) and Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP). Besides well-known concepts of FOP languages, FeatureC++ contributes several novel FOP language features, in particular multiple inheritance and templates for generic programming. Furthermore, FeatureC++ solves several problems regarding incremental software development by adopting AOP concepts. Starting our considerations on solving these problems, we give a summary of drawbacks and weaknesses of current FOP languages in expressing incremental refinements. Specifically, we outline five key problems and present three approaches to solve them: Multi Mixins, Aspectual Mixin Layers, and Aspectual Mixins that adopt AOP concepts in different ways. We use FeatureC++ as a representative FOP language to explain these three approaches. Finally, we present a case study to clarify the benefits of FeatureC++ and its AOP extensions.