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Software systems and product lines often use configurable features to specify a portfolio of product variants from a common core. Typically, their requirements also include constraints on which combinations of features are valid. Especially for larger systems and systems where the specifications are scattered among documents, the analysis of a new product’s variability-related requirements is challenging. To address this, we introduce a scalable, tool-supported framework that uses a variability model to automate checks for missing and inconsistent fea- tures and constraints. Our approach also extends and scales traditional variability requirements engineering by incorporating combinatorial interaction testing tech- niques to build valid product variants covering all configurations in the variability model and to automatically discover faulty feature settings in failed builds. Results from evaluation on two configurable systems show that our framework is effective both at early detection of missing, incorrect, and inconsistent variability requirements and at later finding faulty feature configurations.
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Requirements Analysis of Variability Constraints in a Configurable Flight Software System
Variability constraints are an integral part of the requirements for a configurable system. The constraints specified in the requirements on the legal combinations of options define the space of potential valid configurations for the system-to- be. This paper reports on our experience with the variability- related requirements constraints of a flight software framework used by multiple space missions. A challenge that we saw for practitioners using the current framework, now open-sourced, is that the specifications of its variability-related requirements and constraints are dispersed across several documents, rather than being centralized in the software requirements specification. Such dispersion can contribute to misunderstandings of the side-effects of design choices, increased effort for developers, and bugs during operations. Based on our experience, we propose a new software variability model, similar to a product-line feature model, in the flight software framework. We describe the structured technique by which our model is developed, demonstrate its use, and evaluate it on a key service module of the flight software. Results show that our lightweight modeling technique helped find missing and inconsistent variability-related requirements and constraints. More generally, we suggest that a variability modeling technique such as this can be an efficient way for developers to centralize the specification and improve the analysis of dispersed variability-related requirements and constraints in other configurable systems. Index Terms—Requirement analysis, Variability constraints, Variability requirements, Configurable system, Feature model
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- Award ID(s):
- 2211589
- PAR ID:
- 10434772
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- 31st IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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