Comparison-based feature location in ArgoUML variants

Identifying and extracting parts of a system’s implementation for reuse is an important task for re-engineering system variants into Software Product Lines (SPLs). An SPL is an approach that enables systematic reuse of existing assets across related product variants. The re-engineering process to adopt an SPL from a set of individual variants starts with the location of features and their implementation, to be extracted and migrated into an SPL and reused in new variants. Therefore, feature location is of fundamental importance to the success in the adoption of SPLs. Despite its importance, existing feature location techniques struggle with huge, complex, and numerous system artifacts. This is the scenario of ArgoUML-SPL, which stands out as the most used case study for the validation of feature location approaches. In this paper we use an automated feature location technique and apply it to the ArgoUML feature location challenge posed.