Mapping Features to Source Code through Product Line Architecture: Traceability and Conformance

Existing software product line approaches often develop and evolve product line features, architecture, and source code independently, which makes it difficult to manage the relationship and conformance between these artifacts. This paper presents a novel approach using the architecture as a pivot to address this problem. It consists of a modeling mechanism that integrates features specification into an architectural model, and an architecture-implementation mapping mechanism that combines code generation with annotation processing. The approach can trace a product line feature to the architecture and source code, and automatically update the architecture and source code to maintain their conformance when feature changes occur. We implemented an Eclipse-based toolset to support the approach, and conducted a case study with the Apache Solr open-source system. The result shows that our approach is both applicable and capable to support the development and evolution of real-world variations of a software system.