Automating the Synchronization of Software Variants
M.Sc. Paul Maximilian Bittner
Tracing features to their corresponding implementation in a software project is the main focus of my work. I investigate how feature-to-code mappings may be recorded during development, how mappings may evolve, and how we can synchronize mappings across divering forks, branches, or code clones in general. Within the research project VariantSync, Alexander Schultheiß and me are striving towards making software product-line technology easier to adopt, in particular in clone-and-own development. Until January'20, I was part of the great team at the Institute of Computer Graphics at TU Braunschweig where I also gained a broad background on both computer graphics and vision.
Anything of your interest? Don't hesitate to contact me.
Material
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Topics_for_Theses_and_Projects-February22.pdf | 1 MB | 03.02.2022 10:20 |
Teaching
Winter Term 2021/22
Software Engineering Project: Development of Eclipse Plug-Ins for VariantSync
- Summer Term 2021: Software Product Lines
- Winter Term 2020/21: Software Engineering Project: Development of Eclipse Plug-Ins for VariantSync
- Summer Term 2020: Software Product Lines
Academic Service
I served as a (sub-)reviewer for
- Journals: TSE (A*); SoSyM (B)
- Conferences: GPCE'21 (B); SPLC '21, '20 (B); VaMoS'22, '21 (B)
Featured Publications
Feature Trace Recording
Feature trace recording is a semi-automated method for recording feature-to-code mappings during software development. It uses evolution as a source of information for feature location.

Consider a developer Alice editing the pop method of a Stack class in Java as depicted in the image above. Feature-to-code mappings are indicated by corresponding colours. By labeling her edits with the feature she edits, we derive feature mappings for edited source code. We refer to such a label as feature context. It can be left empty when developers do not know the feature they edit. In our example, Alice does not know the feature of the moved line in her second edit and omits the feature context (i.e., sets it to null). From feature contexts we can compute feature mappings for the current code base but also for other variants. Assume there is a second developer, Bob, working on another variant (e.g., branch or fork) of the software. Bob’s variant might implement other features than Alice’s.
Assume Bob’s variant implements the blue feature SafeStack but not the orange feature ImmutableStack.
Although Alice made many edits to ImmutableStack, we can still derive feature mappings for Bob’s code. When Alice deletes code from ImmutableStack, we can infer that this code does not belong to ImmutableStack anymore. We thus introduce the new feature mapping ¬ImmutableStack for the deleted code that is still present in Bob’s variant (highlighted in purple in the image on the right).
Feature trace recording is the first step towards our vision for bridging the gap between clone-and-own and software product lines in our project VariantSync. You may read about it in our ICSE NIER paper or watch our talk on YouTube.
2022
Feature Trace Recording - Summary
Proc. Software Engineering (SE), Seite 19-20
Herausgeber: Gesellschaft für Informatik, Bonn, Germany
Februar 2022
DOI: | 10.18420/se2022-ws-002 |
Datei: | https://doi.org/10.18420/se2022-ws-002 |
Scalable N-Way Model Matching Using Multi-Dimensional Search Trees - Summary
Proc. Software Engineering (SE), Seite 83-84
Herausgeber: Gesellschaft für Informatik, Bonn, Germany
Februar 2022
DOI: | 10.18420/se2022-ws-028 |
Datei: | https://doi.org/10.18420/se2022-ws-028 |
2021
Scalable N-Way Model Matching Using Multi-Dimensional Search Trees
Proc. Int'l Conf. on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems (MODELS), Seite 1-12
Herausgeber: IEEE, Washington, DC, USA
Oktober 2021
DOI: | 10.1109/MODELS50736.2021.00010 |
Datei: |
Feature Trace Recording
Proc. Europ. Software Engineering Conf./Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE), Seite 1007-1020
Herausgeber: ACM, New York, NY, USA
August 2021
DOI: | 10.1145/3468264.3468531 |
ISBN: | 9781450385626 |
Datei: | https://doi.org/10.1145/3468264.3468531 |
Bridging the Gap Between Clone-and-Own and Software Product Lines
Proc. Int'l Conf. on Software Engineering (ICSE), Seite 21-25
Herausgeber: IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, USA
Mai 2021
DOI: | 10.1109/ICSE-NIER52604.2021.00013 |
ISBN: | 978-1-6654-0140-1 |
Datei: |
Applications of #SAT Solvers on Feature Models
Proc. Int'l Working Conf. on Variability Modelling of Software-Intensive Systems (VaMoS)
Herausgeber: ACM, New York, NY, USA
Februar 2021
DOI: | 10.1145/3442391.3442404 |
ISBN: | 9781450388245 |
Datei: |
2020
Temporal Consistent Motion Parallax for Omnidirectional Stereo Panorama Video
Proc. ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology (VRST)
Herausgeber: ACM, New York, NY, USA
November 2020
DOI: | 10.1145/3385956.3418965 |
Datei: | https://graphics.tu-bs.de/publications/muhlhausen2020temporal |
On the Use of Product-Line Variants as Experimental Subjects for Clone-and-Own Research: A Case Study
Proc. Int'l Systems and Software Product Line Conf. (SPLC)
Herausgeber: ACM, New York, NY, USA
Oktober 2020
DOI: | 10.1145/3382025.3414972 |
ISBN: | 9781450375696 |
Datei: |
Depth Augmented Omnidirectional Stereo for 6-DoF VR Photography
Proc. IEEE Virtual Reality Workshop (VR), Seite 660-661
Herausgeber: IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, USA
Mai 2020
DOI: | 10.1109/VRW50115.2020.00181 |
ISBN: | 978-1-7281-6532-5 |
Datei: | https://graphics.tu-bs.de/publications/bertel2020depth |
Semi-Automated Inference of Feature Traceability During Software Development
Master's Thesis
Master's Thesis
TU Braunschweig, Germany
Februar 2020
DOI: | 10.24355/dbbs.084-202002271120-0 |
Datei: |
2019
SAT Encodings of the At-Most-k Constraint - A Case Study on Configuring University Courses
Proc. Int'l Conf. on Software Engineering and Formal Methods (SEFM), Seite 127-144
Herausgeber: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, Germany
September 2019
DOI: | 10.1007/978-3-030-30446-1_7 |
Datei: |
Evaluation of Optimised Centres of Rotation Skinning
April 2019
Datei: | https://graphics.tu-bs.de/publications/bittner2019evaluation |
Gaze and Motion-aware Real-Time Dome Projection System
Proc. IEEE Virtual Reality Workshop (VR), Seite 1780-1783
Herausgeber: IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, USA
März 2019
DOI: | 10.1109/VR.2019.8797902 |
ISBN: | 978-1-7281-1377-7 |
Datei: | https://graphics.tu-bs.de/publications/grogorick2019gaze |
Immersive EEG: Evaluating Electroencephalography in Virtual Reality
Proc. IEEE Virtual Reality Workshop (VR), Seite 1794-1800
Herausgeber: IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, USA
März 2019
DOI: | 10.1109/VR.2019.8797858 |
Datei: | https://graphics.tu-bs.de/publications/tauscher2019immersive |
SAT Encodings of the At-Most-k Constraint - A Case Study on Configuring University Courses (Project Thesis)
Project Thesis
Project Thesis
TU Braunschweig, Germany
März 2019
Datei: |
2021
Empirical Evaluation of Feature Trace Recording on the Edit History of Marlin
Bachelor's Thesis
Bachelor's Thesis
University of Ulm, Germany
April 2021
DOI: | 10.18725/OPARU-38603 |
Datei: |
M.Sc. Paul Maximilian Bittner

Institute of Software Engineering and Programming Languages
Albert-Einstein-Allee 11