Run-Time Management of Feature Interactions

There is a push to develop feature-rich applications as collections of interconnected feature modules. The problem is that these modules are conceived as independent features, but when strung together, they may interfere with each other because they modify the same shared data (e.g., two features may inconsistently update variables that are encapsulated in a third module). We are studying how to support modular feature development via a framework that interconnects features and that automatically detects and resolves feature interactions. In this paper, we propose a component model for coordinating features and we describe a prototype framework that implements this model.