Evolving embedded product lines: opportunities for aspects

The traditional constraints on software development and architectures in the consumer electronics domain, including the low cost of manufacturing of a product, support for families of products, etc., have been a key driver for the development of component-based product lines (e.g., in consumer electronics at Philips). In this paper we show that adding new features to a product line over time results in crosscutting changes to a system and its constituting components. Given the nature of problems experienced when evolving consumer products with new features, we outline opportunities for using aspect-oriented technologies to address some of these problems.