Programming Rework in Software Processes

Our long-term research in process programming is based on the hypothesis that software processes can and should be captured accurately and formally, using executable formalisms to support execution, analysis, and understanding. Many process languages have been developed over the years for modeling processes formally. In this paper, we argue that for automated support, we need not a process modeling language, but a process programming language – a language with semantics sufficient to support the execution of process definitions. Specifically, we argue that invocation semantics are required for accurately describing real-world development processes. We use the common phenomenon of rework as an example of a process feature which requires invocation semantics for adequate specification. In this paper, we argue that rework can only be accurately described using invocation semantics borrowed from general purpose programming languages. We argue this in the general case and demonstrate a specific case via an example using Little-JIL, our hierarchical process programming language.