Transformation of Preprocessor Variance to Post-Build Variance

Software product lines are widely used to efficiently develop similar variants of a software. In automotive software development, they are often implemented based on the C preprocessor. Even tools for model based development generate such code. The advantage of the preprocessor approach is that only the needed code ends up in the control unit. This way, resource consumption is minimized. On the other hand, for testing and creating meta program versions, post build variance is needed or at least easier to handle. Meta program version means that several of the possible static configurations are integrated in a single binary file, and the concrete configuration can be dynamically selected at engine start. We have developed an approach and tooling to transform existing C code that contains preprocessor variance to post-build variance code.