The Implications of Variation for Testing in a Software Product Line.
John D. McGregor, Kyungsoo Im · Software Product Lines · 2007
Software product lines exhibit variation in various sizes and degrees, everything from changing the scope of the product line to assigning values to specific variables in code. A software product line exhibits this variation in both space and time. In fact there are two dimensions of time that are interesting: product creation time and variation resolution time. The variability model is a significant artifact in a software product line. The information in this model makes a significant contribution to how the software products are tested. Using recent advances in model-driven transformations, it is possible to automatically generate specialized tools for development and testing from product line-specific meta-models using feature models as the product specification mechanism. In this paper we present our initial ideas and identify some issues about developing effective test tools for a product line related to the variations in the product line.