A Concise Classification of Reverse Engineering Approaches for Software Product Lines
Kung-Kiu Lau, Rehman Arshad · Research Explorer (The University of Manchester) · 2016
Reverse engineering in product lines means identification of feature locations in the source code or formation of the non-redundant feature model from descriptive documents. The feature identification can be represented by feature to code trace, graphical notations or tools based view. For adopting a specific approach, it is very important to know how it works, the kind of expertise needed to use it, the kind of tool support that is there, the format of the required input for using that approach, the output notation that it can provide, the related shortcomings that cannot be avoided and the kind of pre-requisite work each approach demands. Based on these parameters, this paper provides a classification of the reverse engineering approaches related to software product lines. Such classification can help the product line engineers or relevant researchers to narrow down the practical options for their implementation and to obtain the better understanding of reverse engineering in product lines.