Software Variability

Software reuse is essential to build software faster. Different customers or platforms may need different features of the same software system. Instead of copy-and-paste mechanisms where different copies of the system is maintained, using Software Product Lines (SPLs) or Highly Configurable Software is a way to systematically create and maintain different variants of the same system.

We have a long line of work in this area, exploring different aspects of creating and maintaining SPLs. A lot of this work is done on the Linux kernel, as an exemplar of an extremely large and popular highly configurable system. We also explored other systems such as Eclipse OMR and Android App software families.

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