Supporting Feature Analysis with Runtime Annotations

The dynamic analysis approach to feature identification describes a technique for capturing feature behavior and mapping it to source code. Major drawbacks of this approach are (1) large amounts of data and (2) lack of support for sub-method elements. In this paper we propose to leverage sub-method reflection to identify and model features. We perform an on-the-fly analysis resulting in annotating the operations participating in a feature’s behavior with meta-data. The primary advantage of our annotation approach is that we obtain a fine-grained level of granularity while at the same time eliminating the need to retain and analyze large traces for feature analysis.