Coevolution of variability models and related artifacts: a case study from the Linux kernel

  • Authors:

  • Leonardo Passos;Jianmei Guo;Leopoldo Teixeira;Krzysztof Czarnecki;Andrzej Wąsowski;Paulo Borba

  • Affiliations:

  • University of Waterloo;University of Waterloo;Federal University of Pernambuco;University of Waterloo;IT University of Copenhagen;Federal University of Pernambuco

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 17th International Software Product Line Conference
  • Year:
  • 2013

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Abstract

Variability-aware systems are subject to the coevolution of variability models and related artifacts. Surprisingly, little knowledge exists to understand such coevolution in practice. This shortage is directly reflected in existing approaches and tools for variability management, as they fail to provide effective support for such a coevolution. To understand how variability models and related artifacts coevolve in a large and complex real-world variability-aware system, we inspect over 500 Linux kernel commits spanning almost four years of development. We collect a catalog of evolution patterns, capturing the coevolution of the Linux kernel variability model, Makefiles, and C source code. Further, we extract general findings to guide further research and tool development.