Feature featherweight java: a calculus for feature-oriented programming and stepwise refinement

ABSTRACT

Feature-oriented programming (FOP) is a paradigm that incorporates programming language technology, program generation techniques, and stepwise refinement. In their GPCE'07 paper, Thaker et al. suggest the development of a type system for FOP to guarantee safe feature composition, i.e, to guarantee the absence of type errors during feature composition. We present such a type system along with a calculus for a simple feature-oriented, Java-like language, called Feature Featherweight Java (FFJ). Furthermore, we explore four extensions of FFJ and how they affect type soundness.

REFERENCES

• 1: Davide Ancona , Giovanni Lagorio , Elena Zucca, Jam---designing a Java extension with mixins, ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS), v.25 n.5, p.641-712, September 2003 [doi>10.1145/937563.937567]
• 2: F. Anfurrutia, O. Díaz, and S. Trujillo. On Refining XML Artifacts. In Proc. Int'l. Conf. Web Engineering (ICWE), volume 4607 of LNCS, pages 473--478. Springer-Verlag, 2007.
• 3: S. Apel and D. Hutchins. An Overview of the gDeep Calculus. Technical Report MIP-0712, Department of Informatics and Mathematics, University of Passau, 2007.
• 4: Sven Apel , Christian Kästner , Don Batory, Program refactoring using functional aspects, Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Generative programming and component engineering, October 19-23, 2008, Nashville, TN, USA [doi>10.1145/1449913.1449938]
• 5: S. Apel, C. Kästner, T. Leich, and G. Saake. Aspect Refinement - Unifying AOP and Stepwise Refinement. Journal of Object Technology - Special Issue: TOOLS EUROPE'07, pages 13--33, 2007.
• 6: S. Apel, C. Kästner, and C. Lengauer. An Overview of Feature Featherweight Java. Technical Report MIP-0802, Department of Informatics and Mathematics, University of Passau, 2008.
• 7: S. Apel, T. Leich, M. Rosenmüller, and G. Saake. FeatureC: On the Symbiosis of Feature-Oriented and Aspect-Oriented Programming. In Proc. Int'l. Conf. Generative Programming and Component Engineering (GPCE), volume 3676 of LNCS, pages 125--140. Springer-Verlag, 2005.
• 8: Sven Apel , Thomas Leich , Gunter Saake, Aspectual Feature Modules, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, v.34 n.2, p.162-180, March 2008 [doi>10.1109/TSE.2007.70770]
• 9: S. Apel and C. Lengauer. Superimposition: A Language-Independent Approach to Software Composition. In Proc. Int'l. Symp. Software Composition (SC), volume 4954 of LNCS, pages 20--35. Springer-Verlag, 2008.
• 10: Scaling Step-Wise Refinement, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, v.30 n.6, p.355-371, June 2004 [doi>10.1109/TSE.2004.23]
• 11: Alexandre Bergel , Stéphane Ducasse , Oscar Nierstrasz, Classbox/J: controlling the scope of change in Java, Proceedings of the 20th annual ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object oriented programming, systems, languages, and applications, October 16-20, 2005, San Diego, CA, USA
• 12: Viviana Bono , Amit Patel , Vitaly Shmatikov, A Core Calculus of Classes and Mixins, Proceedings of the 13th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, p.43-66, June 14-18, 1999
• 13: Dave Clarke , Sophia Drossopoulou , James Noble , Tobias Wrigstad, Tribe: a simple virtual class calculus, Proceedings of the 6th international conference on Aspect-oriented software development, March 12-16, 2007, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada [doi>10.1145/1218563.1218578]
• 14: Curtis Clifton , Todd Millstein , Gary T. Leavens , Craig Chambers, MultiJava: Design rationale, compiler implementation, and applications, ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS), v.28 n.3, p.517-575, May 2006 [doi>10.1145/1133651.1133655]
• 15: William R. Cook, Object-Oriented Programming Versus Abstract Data Types, Proceedings of the REX School/Workshop on Foundations of Object-Oriented Languages, p.151-178, May 28-June 01, 1990
• 16: Krzysztof Czarnecki , Krzysztof Pietroszek, Verifying feature-based model templates against well-formedness OCL constraints, Proceedings of the 5th international conference on Generative programming and component engineering, October 22-26, 2006, Portland, Oregon, USA [doi>10.1145/1173706.1173738]
• 17: Erik Ernst , Klaus Ostermann , William R. Cook, A virtual class calculus, Conference record of the 33rd ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on Principles of programming languages, p.270-282, January 11-13, 2006, Charleston, South Carolina, USA
• 18: Matthew Flatt , Shriram Krishnamurthi , Matthias Felleisen, Classes and mixins, Proceedings of the 25th ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on Principles of programming languages, p.171-183, January 19-21, 1998, San Diego, California, United States [doi>10.1145/268946.268961]
• 19: Vaidas Gasiunas , Mira Mezini , Klaus Ostermann, Dependent classes, Proceedings of the 22nd annual ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object oriented programming systems and applications, October 21-25, 2007, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
• 20: R. Hirschfeld, P. Costanza, and O. Nierstrasz. Context-Oriented Programming. J. Object Technology (JOT), 7(3):125--151, 2008.
• 21: Shan Shan Huang , Yannis Smaragdakis, Expressive and safe static reflection with MorphJ, Proceedings of the 2008 ACM SIGPLAN conference on Programming language design and implementation, June 07-13, 2008, Tucson, AZ, USA
• 22: DeLesley Hutchins, Eliminating distinctions of class: using prototypes to model virtual classes, Proceedings of the 21st annual ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object-oriented programming systems, languages, and applications, October 22-26, 2006, Portland, Oregon, USA
• 23: Atsushi Igarashi , Benjamin C. Pierce , Philip Wadler, Featherweight Java: a minimal core calculus for Java and GJ, ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS), v.23 n.3, p.396-450, May 2001 [doi>10.1145/503502.503505]
• 24: A. Igarashi, C. Saito, and M. Viroli. Lightweight Family Polymorphism. In Proc. Asian Symp. Programming Languages and Systems (APLAS), volume 3780 of LNCS, pages 161--177. Springer-Verlag, 2005.
• 25: T. Kamina and T. Tamai. McJava - A Design and Implementation of Java with Mixin-Types. In Proc. Asian Symp. Programming Languages and Systems (APLAS), volume 3302 of LNCS, pages 398--414. Springer-Verlag, 2004.
• 26: K. Kang, S. Cohen, J. Hess, W. Novak, and A. Peterson. Feature-Oriented Domain Analysis (FODA) Feasibility Study. Technical Report CMU/SEI-90-TR-21, Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, 1990.
• 27: C. Kästner and S. Apel. Type-checking Software Product Lines - A Formal Approach. In Proc. Int'l. Conf. Automated Software Engineering (ASE). IEEE CS Press, 2008.
• 28: Christian Kästner , Sven Apel , Martin Kuhlemann, Granularity in software product lines, Proceedings of the 30th international conference on Software engineering, May 10-18, 2008, Leipzig, Germany [doi>10.1145/1368088.1368131]
• 29: C. Kästner, S. Apel, S. Trujillo, M. Kuhlemann, and D. Batory. Language-Independent Safe Decomposition of Legacy Applications into Features. Technical Report 02/2008, School of Computer Science, University of Magdeburg, 2008.
• 30: Luigi Liquori , Arnaud Spiwack, FeatherTrait: A modest extension of Featherweight Java, ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS), v.30 n.2, p.1-32, March 2008 [doi>10.1145/1330017.1330022]
• 31: Roberto Lopez-Herrejon , Don Batory , Christian Lengauer, A disciplined approach to aspect composition, Proceedings of the 2006 ACM SIGPLAN symposium on Partial evaluation and semantics-based program manipulation, January 09-10, 2006, Charleston, South Carolina [doi>10.1145/1111542.1111554]
• 32: Ole Lehrmann Madsen , Birger Mø-Pedersen , Kristen Nygaard, Object-oriented programming in the BETA programming language, ACM Press/Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., New York, NY, 1993
• 33: Sean McDirmid , Matthew Flatt , Wilson C. Hsieh, Jiazzi: new-age components for old-fasioned Java, Proceedings of the 16th ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object oriented programming, systems, languages, and applications, p.211-222, October 14-18, 2001, Tampa Bay, FL, USA
• 34: S. McDirmid, W. Hsieh, and M. Flatt. A Framework for Modular Linking in OO Languages. In Proc. Joint Modular Lang. Conf. (JMLC), volume 4228 of LNCS, pages 116--135. Springer-Verlag, 2006.
• 35: Nathan McEachen , Roger T. Alexander, Distributing classes with woven concerns: an exploration of potential fault scenarios, Proceedings of the 4th international conference on Aspect-oriented software development, p.192-200, March 14-18, 2005, Chicago, Illinois [doi>10.1145/1052898.1052915]
• 36: Nathaniel Nystrom , Stephen Chong , Andrew C. Myers, Scalable extensibility via nested inheritance, Proceedings of the 19th annual ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object-oriented programming, systems, languages, and applications, October 24-28, 2004, Vancouver, BC, Canada
• 37: M. Odersky, V. Cremet, C. Röckl, and M. Zenger. A Nominal Theory of Objects with Dependent Types. In Proc. Europ. Conf. Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP), volume 2743 of LNCS, pages 201--224. Springer-Verlag, 2003.
• 38: Martin Odersky , Matthias Zenger, Scalable component abstractions, Proceedings of the 20th annual ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object oriented programming, systems, languages, and applications, October 16-20, 2005, San Diego, CA, USA
• 39: K. Ostermann. Nominal and Structural Subtyping in Component-Based Programming. J. Object Technology (JOT), 7(1):121--145, 2008.
• 40: C. Prehofer. Feature-Oriented Programming: A Fresh Look at Objects. In Proc. Europ. Conf. Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP), volume 1241 of LNCS, pages 419--443. Springer-Verlag, 1997.
• 41: John C. Reynolds, User-defined types and procedural data structures as complementary approaches to data abstraction, Theoretical aspects of object-oriented programming: types, semantics, and language design, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1994
• 42: Antero Taivalsaari, On the notion of inheritance, ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), v.28 n.3, p.438-479, Sept. 1996 [doi>10.1145/243439.243441]
• 43: Sahil Thaker , Don Batory , David Kitchin , William Cook, Safe composition of product lines, Proceedings of the 6th international conference on Generative programming and component engineering, October 01-03, 2007, Salzburg, Austria [doi>10.1145/1289971.1289989]
• 44: M. Torgersen. The Expression Problem Revisited. In Proc. Europ. Conf. Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP), volume 3086 of LNCS, pages 123--143. Springer-Verlag, 2004.
• 45: Niklaus Wirth, Program development by stepwise refinement, Communications of the ACM, v.14 n.4, p.221-227, April 1971 [doi>10.1145/362575.362577]
• 46: Andrew K. Wright , Matthias Felleisen, A syntactic approach to type soundness, Information and Computation, v.115 n.1, p.38-94, Nov. 15, 1994 [doi>10.1006/inco.1994.1093]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.3 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
      D.3.1 Formal Definitions and Theory

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.3 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
      D.3.3 Language Constructs and Features

General Terms:
Design, Languages, Theory

Keywords:
featherweight java, feature-oriented programming, safe feature composition, stepwise refinement, type systems