A case study in refactoring a legacy component for reuse in a product line

This paper describes activities performed to systematically improve the design and implementation of an existing software component in order to reuse it in a software product line. The activities are embedded in the application of Fraunhofer's PuLSE/spl trade/-DSSA approach for defining the architecture of a new product line. The component under investigation is the so called image memory handler (IMH) which is used in Ricoh's current products of office appliances such as copier machines, printers, and multi-functional peripherals. It is responsible for controlling memory usage and compressing and decompressing image data. Both the improvement of the component's design and implementation are based on a systematic analysis and focused on increasing maintainability and reusability and hence suitability for use in a product line.