Architectural bad smells in software product lines: an exploratory study

The Software Product Lines (SPL) paradigm has arisen for taking advantage of existing common aspects between different products, while also considering product-specific features. The architecture of a SPL comprises a model that will result in product architectures, and may include solutions leading to bad (architectural) design. One way to assess such design decisions is through the identification of architectural bad smells, which are properties that prejudice the overall software quality, but are not necessarily faulty or errant. In this paper, we conduct an exploratory study that aims at characterizing bad smells in the context of product line architectures. We analyzed an open source SPL project and extracted its architecture to investigate the occurrence or absence of four smells initially studied in single systems. In addition, we propose a smell specific to the SPL context and discuss possible causes and implications of having those smells in the architecture of a product line. The results indicate that the granularity of the SPL features may influence on the occurrence of smells.