Identifying issues and concerns in software reuse in software product lines

Abstract

One of the reasons for introducing software product lines (SPL) is the reduction of costs through reusing common assets for different products. Developing assets to be reused in different products is often not easy. Increasing complexity due to the multitude of different functions and their interactions as well as a rising number of different product variants are just some of the challenges that must be faced when reusing software and other assets. In an attempt to understand the obstacles to implementing software reuse in SPL we have conducted a survey to investigate how software reuse is adopted in SPL so as to provide the necessary degree of support for engineering software product line applications and to identify some of the issues and concerns in software reuse. This survey also gathers information from SPL practitioners on what influences the selection of software to reuse within a software product line. This paper reports the results of that survey.