From Crosscutting Concerns to Product Lines: A Function Composition Approach

AspectJ in the synthesis of a non-trivial product line previAbstract Aspects offer sophisticated mechanisms to modularize crosscutting concerns. Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP) has been successfully applied to many domains; however, its application to product line engineering has not been thoroughly explored. Features are increments in program functionality and are building blocks of software product lines. Work on Feature Oriented Programming (FOP) has shown that a crucial factor to synthesize product lines is composing features by function composition. In this paper we describe a way to emulate function composition using AspectJ for the synthesis of a non-trivial product line, present a general mechanism to support it and highlight its potential reuse benefits. Our study also profiles the role different aspect constructs play in the synthesis of product lines and offers venues of research on the use of aspects in product line implementations.