An approach to develop frameworks from feature models

Frameworks are reusable software composed of concrete and abstract classes that implement the functionality of a domain. Applications can reuse framework design and code in order to improve their quality and be developed more efficiently. However, to develop software for reuse, such as a framework, is harder than to develop an application. Hence, in this paper we present an approach, named From Features to Framework (F3), to facilitate the development of white box frameworks. This approach is divided in two steps: Domain Modeling, in which the features of the framework are defined; and Framework Construction, in which the framework is designed and implemented according to its features and their relationships. We also present an experiment that evaluated the F3 approach showing that it makes framework development easier and more efficient.