A classification of product sampling for software product lines

The analysis of software product lines is challenging due to the potentially large number of products, which grow exponentially in terms of the number of features. Product sampling is a technique used to avoid exhaustive testing, which is often infeasible. In this paper, we propose a classification for product sampling techniques and classify the existing literature accordingly. We distinguish the important characteristics of such approaches based on the information used for sampling, the kind of algorithm, and the achieved coverage criteria. Furthermore, we give an overview on existing tools and evaluations of product sampling techniques. We share our insights on the state-of-the-art of product sampling and discuss potential future work.