A Roadmap Toward Model-Driven Feature Refactoring

Feature refactoring is the process of decomposing a system's code into a set of modules, called features, that are a means for communicating commonalities and variabilities to stakeholders. As features encapsulate functionality, different compositions of features yield a family of different systems. Previous work describes how feature decomposition is done manually at source code level, it being a time consuming task. This work describes an alternative approach whereby refactoring begins at a higher level of abstraction (i.e., abstracting refactoring from code). We drew our inspiration from ideas for model harvesting and show how they can be applied to feature refactoring. This paper introduces the approach we took whereby a gas boiler system controller was manually feature refactored into a software product line. After this experience, we outline a modeldriven approach for simplifying such refactorings in the future. Ultimately, this work envisages a broader perspective where feature refactoring and model-driven development techniques are used together to yield a software product line.