A co-evolution model for software product lines: An approach based on evolutionary trees

Software product line engineering allows for the development of common reference assets that can be reused in the development of a set of products of a particular market, the purpose of such large scale reuse is the improvement of time to market and the reduction of costs. This goal can only be achieved if the software product line assets are continuously evolved to cope with changes of user requirements. In this paper we present a co-evolution model for checking the integrity of the software product line during its evolution. The model is established using cladistics and trees reconciliation that are used in biology to analyze the co-evolution between organisms. This model shows the divergent co-evolution which represents a difference between the evolutionary trees of the software product line and a derived product. The model helps to find out changes of products that were not propagated to the reference assets and to anticipate the future development to be done on these reference assets to cope with products evolution. By its application we protect software product lines from the aging phenomenon.