A first prototype of a new repository for feature model exchange and knowledge sharing

Abstract

Feature models are the "de facto" standard for variability modelling and are used in both academia and industry. The MODEVAR initiative tries to establish a common textual feature modelling language that can be used by different communities and can allow information sharing. Feature model related researches use different models for different purposes such as analysis, sampling, testing, debugging, teaching, etc. Those models are shared in private repositories and there is a risk that all that knowledge is spread across different platforms which hinder collaboration and knowledge reuse. In this paper, we propose a first working version of a new feature model repository that allows to centralise the knowledge generated in the community together with advanced capabilities such as DOI generation, an API, analysis reports, among others. Our solution is a front end interface that uses the popular open science repository Zenodo as an end point to materialise the storage of all the information. Zenodo is enhanced with characteristics that facilitate the management of the models. The idea of our repository is to provide existing but also new features that are not present in other repositories (e.g., SPLOT). We propose to populate our repository with all the existing models of many sources including SPLOT.