Avaliação da manutenibilidade de sistemas de software derivados de linhas de produtos de software

Abstract

Software Product Lines (SPL) can generate several products with small differences. This characteristic is called product variability. Managing variability is as difficult as to determine what part of a software will be reusable another product. Making changes to a product line is not as simple as making changes to single systems, because a change can impact on various products. Besides, when many modules are modified the process of testing should occur in various products. However, when compared SPL and unique systems, SPL has proved advantageous over other techniques. This work aims at evaluating the maintainability of software systems generated from a SPL. In this work 7 criteria to achieve higher software maintainability are shown. Associated to each criterion are some guidelines to assist in the activities of software maintenance. These criteria and guidelines were applied to SPL TankWar. The evaluation involved six products and the Maintainability Index was used as reference. The index involves other measures such as Halstead’s Volume and Cyclomatic Complexity. The results were positive and the maintainability index increased about 13 points.