Variant and Product Line Co-Evolution

Springer eBooks, pp. 333–351

Abstract

Abstract Individual collaborative embedded systems (CESs) in a collaborative system group (CSG) are typically provided by different manufacturers. Variability in such systems is pivotal for deploying a CES in different CSGs and environments. Changing requirements may entail the evolution of a CES. Such changed requirements can be manifold: individual variants of a CES are updated to fix bugs, or the manufacturer changes the entire CES product line to provide new capabilities. Both types of evolution, the variant evolution and the product line evolution, may be performed in parallel. However, neither type of evolution should lead to diverging states of CES variants and the CES product line, otherwise both would be incompatible, it would not be possible to update the CES variants, and it would not be possible to reuse bug fixes of an individual variant for the entire product line. To avoid this divergence, we present an approach for co-evolving variants and product lines, thus ensuring their consistency.

Authors 5

1. Jörg Christian Kirchhof Aachen

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

2. Michael Nieke

   Technische Universität Braunschweig

   Affiliation as printed

   TU Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany

3. Ina Schaefer

   Technische Universität Braunschweig

   Affiliation as printed

   TU Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany

4. David Schmalzing Aachen

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

5. Michael Schulze
   Affiliation as printed

   pure-systems GmbH, Magdeburg, Germany