Towards compositional synthesis of evolving systems

Synthesis of system configurations from a given set of features is an important and very challenging problem. This paper makes a step towards this goal by describing an efficient technique for synthesizing pipeline configurations of feature-based systems. We identify and formalize a design pattern that is commonly used in feature-based development. We show that this pattern enables compositional synthesis of feature arrangements. In particular, the pattern allows us to add or remove features from an existing system without having to reconfigure the system from scratch. We describe an implementation of our technique and evaluate its applicability and effectiveness using a set of telecommunication features from AT&T, arranged within the DFC architecture.