Implementing refactorings for FOP: lessons learned and challenges ahead

  • Authors:
  • Sandro Schulze;Malte Lochau;Saskia Brunswig

  • Affiliations:
  • TU Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany;TU Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany;TU Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Feature-Oriented Software Development
  • Year:
  • 2013

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Abstract

Software product lines (SPL) gain momentum as a mean for developing and managing a set of related software systems under one umbrella. While intensive research on design and implementation of SPLs exist, the consequences of continuous evolution over time such as a decay of design or implementation have been neglected so far. In this context, refactoring has been shown to be an appropriate mean for improving the structure of source code. In this paper, we provide support for fine-grained program refactoring of feature-oriented SPLs. Particularly, we extend existing, object-oriented refactorings by taking the additional dimension of variability into account. To this end, we present the tool VAmPiRE as a basic framework for such refactorings and explain our considerations during implementation, which has been mainly guided by the idea of decomposing refactorings for ease and understandability. Additionally, we provide a detailed discussion about problems and limitations we faced during the implementation and come up with future challenges that have to be tackled for reliable and automated refactoring of software product lines.