Using C Language Extensions for Developing Embedded Software: A Case Study

We report on an industrial case study on developing the embedded software for a smart meter using the C programming language and domain-specific extensions of C such as components, physical units, state machines, registers and interrupts. We find that the extensions help significantly with managing the complexity of the software. They improve...

Test Confessions: A Study of Testing Practices for Plug-in Systems

Testing plug-in-based systems is challenging due to complex interactions among many different plug-ins, and variations in version and configuration. The objective of this paper is to increase our understanding of what testers and developers think and do when it comes to testing plug-inbased systems. To that end, we conduct a qualitative ...

Sort-based Refactoring of Crosscutting Concerns to Aspects

Preprint of paper published in: LATE 2008 - Proceedings of the 2008 AOSD Workshop on Linking Aspect Technology and Evolution, 31 March-4 April 2008; doi:10.1145/1404953.1404957 Crosscutting concerns in object-oriented programming hinder evolution because of their symptoms: tangling and scattering. To benefit from the modularisation capabilities...

Documenting Typical Crosscutting Concerns

Our analysis of crosscutting concerns in real-life software systems (totaling over 500,000 LOC) and in aspect-oriented literature, indicated a number of properties that allow for their decomposition in primitive building blocks which are atomic crosscutting concerns. We identify these blocks as crosscutting concern sorts, and we use them to...