Meta-Environments for Software Production

Researchers who create software production environments face considerable problems Soft ware production environments are large systems that are costly to develop Furthermore soft ware production environments which support particular software engineering methods may not be applicable to a large number of software production projects These conditions have formed a trend towards research into ways which will lessen the cost of developing software production environments In particular the trend has been towards the construction of meta environments from which speci c software production environments can be created In this paper we at tempt to categorize more than meta environment e orts For each of the categories we review research e orts which illustrate di erent approaches within that category We conclude by presenting an emerging common thread of requirements which links this eld together