Automated Migration Support for Software Product Line Co-evolution

The idea of automated migration support arises from the problems observed in practice and the missing solutions for software product line (SPL) co-evolution support. In practice it is common to realize new functionality via unsystematic code cloning: A product is separated from its related SPL and then modified. When a separated product and the SPL evolve over time, this is called SPL co-evolution. During this process, developers have to manually migrate, for example, features or bugfixes between the SPL and the product. Currently, there exist only partially automated solutions for this use case. The proposed approach is the first, which aims at using semantic merging to migrate arbitrary semantic units, like features or bugfixes, between a SPL and separated products.