Abstract:
In this article a restricted notion of design space is introduced to model variability in a system by controlling variations on the source code. Along with the definition, we propose a graphical notation, a XML file format and translation schemes to existing tools. We present also details of an implementation of several tools developed or adapted to the introduced notion, as well as a complete example of the usage of the notion and the tools: the configuration of a toy kernel for embedded controllers. Compared with related work, the main features of the restricted notion of design space here introduced are: (1) the restricted definition doesn't support numeric ranges as source of variability (2) it has associated a property of consistency and (3) there is a decidable procedure to check the consistency of a restricted design space during its construction or during its usage.

Vladimir Támara Patiño
Universität Kaiserslautern
Fachbereich Informatik. AG Madlener
Postfach 3049
67653 Kaiserslautern, Germany