Feature Relation and Dependency Management: An Aspect-Oriented Approach

Product line assets must be designed so that inclusion or exclusion of variable features causes little changes to components implementing other features. In order to achieve this goal, various relationships or dependencies that variable features have with other features must be analyzed thoroughly before designing product line assets. An object-oriented approach has been proposed to manage operational dependencies between features. However, it still suffers from code scattering and tangling problems. To address these problems, this paper introduces aspect-oriented implementation patterns which separate feature relations and dependencies from components implementing core functionality of features. Using these patterns, we can improve adaptability, scalability (modifiability in general), and configurability of product line assets. A simple calculator product line example is used to validate this approach.