Experiences with Constructing and Evolving a Software Product Line with Delta-Oriented Programming

A Software Product Line (SPL) captures families of closely related software variants. The configuration options of an SPL are represented by features. Typically, SPLs are developed in a featurecentric manner and, thus, require different development methods and technologies from developing software products individually. For developers of single systems, this means a shift in paradigm and technology. Especially with invasive variability realization mechanisms, such as Delta-Oriented Programming (DOP), centering development around configurable features realized via source code transformation is commonly expected to pose an obstacle, but concrete experience reports are lacking. In this paper, we investigate how DOP and cutting-edge SPL development tools are picked up by non-expert developers. To this end, we report on our experiences from a student capstone SPL development project. Our results show that participants find easy access to SPL development concepts and tools. Based on our observations and the participants’ practices, we define guidelines for developers using DOP.