Paper Build Level Component Based Software Engineering

A lot of potentially reusable functionality exists in current software systems that does not become available for reuse. An important reason is that while at the functional level well-known modularization principles are applied for structuring functionality into modules, this is not the case at the build level for structuring files in directories. This leads to a situation where files are entangled in directory hierarchies and build processes, making it hard to extract functionality and to make functionality suitable for reuse. Consequently, software may not become available for reuse at all, or only in rather large chunks of functionality, which may lead to extra software dependencies.

We propose to improve this situation by applying component-based software engineering (CBSE) principles to the build level. Build-level components serve to make artefacts reusable, while build-level composition techniques serve to assemble complete applications. This combines advantages of having small components (e.g., reuse) and large systems (e.g., ease of deployment). In this article we explore build-level CBSE in full detail. We discuss theory and practice of build-level development, deployment and composition techniques. Case studies demonstrate the feasibility of our techniques.

BibTeX Entry

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