Modeling Dependent Software Product Lines

Techniques to model software product lines (SPLs), using feature models, usually focus on a single SPL. Larger SPLs can also be built from smaller SPLs which results in a dependency between the involved SPLs, i.e., one SPL uses functionality provided by another SPL. Currently, this can be described using constraints between the involved feature models. However, if multiple differently configured instances are used in a composition of SPLs, dependencies between the concrete instances have to be considered. In this paper, we present an extension to current SPL modeling based on class diagrams that allows us to describe SPL instances and dependencies among them. We use SPL specialization to provide reuse of SPL configurations between different SPL compositions.