Reengineering of configurations based on mathematical concept analysis

Abstract

We apply mathematical concept analysis to the problem of reengineering configurations. Concept analysis will reconstruct a taxonomy of concepts from a relation between objects and attributes. We use concept analysis to infer configuration structures from existing source code. Our tool NORA/RECS will accept source code, where configuration-specific code pieces are controlled by the preprocessor. The algorithm will compute a so-called concept lattice, which -when visually displayed -offers remarkable insight into the structure and properties of possible configurations.