Article

Separating features in source code: an exploratory study

Authors:

Gail C. Murphy,

Robert J. Walker,

Martin P. RobillardAuthors Info & Claims

ICSE '01: Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Software Engineering

Pages 275 - 284

Published: 01 July 2001 Publication History

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Abstract

Most software systems are inflexible. Reconfiguring a system's modules to add or to delete a feature requires substantial effort. This inflexibility increases the costs of building variants of a system, amongst other problems.

New languages and tools that are being developed to provide additional support for separating concerns show promise to help address this problem. However, applying these mechanisms requires determining how to enable a feature to be separated from the codebase. In this paper, we investigate this problem through an exploratory study conducted in the context of two existing systems: gnu.regexp and jFTPd. The study consisted of applying three different separation of concern mechanisms—Hyper/J,^TM AspectJ,^TM and a lightweight, lexically-based approach—to separate features in the two packages. In this paper, we report on the study, providing contributions in two areas. First, we characterize the effect different mechanisms had on the structure of the codebase. Second, we characterize the restructuring process required to perform the separations. These characterizations can help researchers to elucidate how the mechanisms may be best used, tool developers to design support to aid the separation process, and early adopters to apply the techniques.

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Cited By

Chen YSun SLan TVenkataramani GShoshitaishvili YNaik M(2018)TOSSProceedings of the 2018 Workshop on Forming an Ecosystem Around Software Transformation10.1145/3273045.3273048(1-7)Online publication date: 15-Oct-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3273045.3273048
Krüger JSchröter IKenner AKruczek CLeich TSeidl CTeixeira L(2016)FeatureCoPP: compositional annotationsProceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Feature-Oriented Software Development10.1145/3001867.3001876(74-84)Online publication date: 30-Oct-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3001867.3001876
Rubin JCzarnecki KChechik MKishi TJarzabek SGnesi S(2013)Managing cloned variantsProceedings of the 17th International Software Product Line Conference10.1145/2491627.2491644(101-110)Online publication date: 26-Aug-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2491627.2491644
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Index Terms

Separating features in source code: an exploratory study

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cover image ACM Conferences

ICSE '01: Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Software Engineering

July 2001

844 pages

ISBN:0769510507

Chairman:
Hausi A. Müller
Univ. of Victoria, Canada

Copyright © Copyright (c) 2001 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. All rights reserved.

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SIGSOFT: ACM Special Interest Group on Software Engineering

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IEEE Computer Society

United States

Publication History

Published: 01 July 2001

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ICSE01

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ICSE01: 23rd International Conference on Software Engineering

May 12 - 19, 2001

Ontario, Toronto, Canada

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ICSE '01 Paper Acceptance Rate 47 of 268 submissions, 18%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 276 of 1,856 submissions, 15%

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Cited By

Chen YSun SLan TVenkataramani GShoshitaishvili YNaik M(2018)TOSSProceedings of the 2018 Workshop on Forming an Ecosystem Around Software Transformation10.1145/3273045.3273048(1-7)Online publication date: 15-Oct-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3273045.3273048
Krüger JSchröter IKenner AKruczek CLeich TSeidl CTeixeira L(2016)FeatureCoPP: compositional annotationsProceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Feature-Oriented Software Development10.1145/3001867.3001876(74-84)Online publication date: 30-Oct-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3001867.3001876
Rubin JCzarnecki KChechik MKishi TJarzabek SGnesi S(2013)Managing cloned variantsProceedings of the 17th International Software Product Line Conference10.1145/2491627.2491644(101-110)Online publication date: 26-Aug-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2491627.2491644
Cazzola WVacchi EShin SMaldonado J(2013)Fine-grained annotations for pointcuts with a finer granularityProceedings of the 28th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing10.1145/2480362.2480685(1706-1711)Online publication date: 18-Mar-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2480362.2480685
Rubin JChechik M(2012)Combining related products into product linesProceedings of the 15th international conference on Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering10.1007/978-3-642-28872-2_20(285-300)Online publication date: 24-Mar-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-642-28872-2_20
Hohenstein UJaeger M(2011)Tackling the challenges of integrating 3rd party software using AspectJTransactions on aspect-oriented software development VIII10.5555/2028556.2028562(116-140)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2028556.2028562
Bynens MTruyen EJoosen W(2011)A system of patterns for reusable aspect librariesTransactions on aspect-oriented software development VIII10.5555/2028556.2028559(46-107)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2028556.2028559
Schulze SApel SKästner C(2010)Code clones in feature-oriented software product linesACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/1942788.186831046:2(103-112)Online publication date: 10-Oct-2010
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1942788.1868310
Ribeiro MPacheco HTeixeira LBorba PCook WClarke SRinard M(2010)Emergent feature modularizationProceedings of the ACM international conference companion on Object oriented programming systems languages and applications companion10.1145/1869542.1869545(11-18)Online publication date: 17-Oct-2010
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1869542.1869545
Schulze SApel SKästner CVisser EJärvi J(2010)Code clones in feature-oriented software product linesProceedings of the ninth international conference on Generative programming and component engineering10.1145/1868294.1868310(103-112)Online publication date: 10-Oct-2010
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1868294.1868310
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