A Systematic Reuse-Based Approach for Customized Cloned Variants

Systematic reuse often becomes possible only after a number of customized cloned variants have already been delivered. Transforming from customized cloned variants to a systematic reuse with the explicit management of variability is beneficial. Hence, industrial companies prefer to adopt a reuse-based approach. We propose in this research work an approach that supports the re-engineering of existing customized cloned variants towards systematic software reuse. The approach also eases the process of adding a new variant to a set of customized cloned variants, whenever there is enough implementation similarity between the existing customized cloned variants and the new one. We plan to evaluate our approach in an industrial case study, specifically in a set of customized cloned variants of software applications used by automotive companies. As an initial validation effort, we already have presented our first results to software developers at Bosch. They provided us a positive feedback about the ability of our approach to give an overview of the commonality and the variability of the customized cloned variant. For more robust validation, we propose to use a structured demonstration for the same industrial case study environment with qualitative and quantitive evaluation of the impact.