Happy to announce that the German Research Foundation DFG public | @[email protected] accepted the grant proposal by Timo Kehrer and me. With VariantSync, we aim to automate the synchronization of software variants. The grant incorporates a total of 618,000 € for 2 PhD students over 3 years.

When 2 co-authors sent back revisions of the same manuscript simultaneously, and you use "a tool to easily & automatically merge" the 2 versions.

In March 2020, Paul Bittner started on a PhD position in the VariantSync project. His master's thesis on the Semi-Automated Inference of Feature Traceability During Software Development is available online: doi.org/10.24355/dbbs.…

Paul Maximilian Bittner just gave his talk at #fosd21 on feature trace recording. Slides: bit.ly/3mJOIQD Thesis: bit.ly/3wQWUTI Project: VariantSync

Alexander Schultheiß just talked at #fosd21 about his ongoing research as part of the VariantSync project: Investigating the Potential of Automating Change Propagation in Clone-and-Own Development Authors: @SchultheissAlex, Paul Maximilian Bittner, Timo Kehrer, Thomas Thüm

A preliminary version of our @icseconf presentation on VariantSync is available online: Bridging the Gap between Clone-and-Own and Software Product Lines by Timo Kehrer, Thomas Thüm, @SchultheissAlex, Paul Maximilian Bittner youtube.com/watch?v=oJf8W4…

I am delighted to announce that our paper “Feature Trace Recording” got accepted at #esecfse21 FSE 2025! Big thanks to my co-authors @SchultheissAlex, Thomas Thüm, Timo Kehrer, doyougnu, and Lukas Linsbauer! Preprint: tinyurl.com/ftresecfse21 Code: github.com/pmbittner/Feat… 1/8

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 (tinyurl.com/variantsync) or watch it (youtube.com/watch?v=oJf8W4…) 😊. 8/8

We are grateful and very happy to have received the best artifact award at FSE 2025 '21. Special thanks to doyougnu for teaching me #Haskell, to doyougnu and Tobias Heß for their help with Docker, and to our reviewers. pmbittner.github.io/FeatureTraceRe…

Our paper "Classifying Edits to Variability in Source Code" got accepted at #esecfse22 FSE 2025! Big thanks to my co-authors Christof Tinnes, @SchultheissAlex, Sören Viegener, Timo Kehrer, and Thomas Thüm! We give a short overview below! :) Preprint: github.com/SoftVarE-Group… 1/8

Our tooling for our empirical validation across 44 open-source configurable systems, including the linux kernel, was just awared with the available and reusable badges! :) You may check it out here: github.com/VariantSync/Di… 8/8

#OnlineFirst RaQuN: a generic and scalable n-way model matching algorithm Alexander Schultheiß, Paul Maximilian Bittner, Alexander Boll, Lars Grunske, Thomas Thüm & Timo Kehrer doi.org/10.1007/s10270…

Clone-and-own is like a forest fire. You need to work against the fire (maintenance) or migrate to a product line. Feature traces can help to bridge the gap. @SchultheissAlex at #FOSD23

VariantSync @SchultheissAlex This is not science fiction. The bridge exists in reality. Clone-and-own is in Bavaria (Neu-Ulm) and product lines are in Baden-Württemberg (Ulm).

Want to find out what is meant with clone-and-own and why it is problematic? Curious how it can be supported with version control systems and build systems? Youtube: youtube.com/watch?v=JzB1rg… Slides: raw.githubusercontent.com/SoftVarE-Group… Many thanks to Timo Kehrer and Elias Kuiter (Elias Kuiter)

Recently at #splc2023: Paul helping Alice with doing code reviews for Bob's changes to a product line. Formalization, tooling, and large-scale empirical evaluation of views on edits. Slides: github.com/SoftVarE-Group… Preprint: github.com/SoftVarE-Group… Paper: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/35…

Right now at #splc2023: Sebastian Krieter presenting VariantInc, a tool within the scope of the research project VariantSync. Co-Authors: @JacobKrueger_, Thomas Leich, Gunter Saake Slides: github.com/SoftVarE-Group… Preprint: github.com/SoftVarE-Group… Paper: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/35…