Analyzing and Re-structuring Product Line Dependencies

Software product lines have proven to be successful for developing many critical software systems. Sharing thoroughly tested components can greatly improve the quality of individual products. The structuring of commonality and variability in the product line creates dependencies among features and components. Because of the dependencies, individual products may be bloated with features and components not required by the product specification. This increases complexity and resource consumption, affecting product quality negatively. We propose a method for analyzing product line dependencies for identifying unnecessary features. If these features are found, the method also addresses how to correct the situation. Our approach is demonstrated with a running example and our experiences in real industrial cases are discussed.