Incremental Maintenance of Software Artifacts
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
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The software engineering environment described in this paper directly addresses the problems of modifying software by explicitly linking software designs to implementations - localizing and partitioning the portions of the implementation corresponding to distinct features and thus facilitating understanding. The operations of feature extraction and generic feature instantiation implemented in this environment provide mechanisms for partially automating the configuration of software. Software documentation based on the notion of features not only records information on program function and structure but information on how maintenance is to be performed. Furthermore, a design environment supporting features and feature contexts promotes feature-oriented design which means designing for reuse and maintainability.