Product-line development requires sophisticated software configuration management

Abstract

Software process technology as well as software configuration management (SCM) has focussed very much on supporting the development and evolution of a single software product rather than software product-lines. In the case of SCM this is particular harmful, because current SCM technology only provides very limited support to adjust a tool supporting SCM to the particular needs and requirements of a company producing product-line software. Usually such a tool has a built-in process and to the most provides a shell-script like language to define certain responsibilities or development status attributes for the artifacts produced during development and maintenance. There is virtually no support to adjust a tool to e.g. the definition of special workflows for change management and notification.