Towards specifying pragmatic software reuse

Software reuse has numerous benefits, including reduced development time, defect density, and increased developer productivity. Numerous approaches to software reuse have been developed and we can divide them into two categories: preplanned approaches, where software artifacts are developed to be reused; and pragmatic approaches, that facilitate the reuse of software artifacts not necessarily designed for reuse. In this paper, we specify the general approach to pragmatic software reuse, which consists of three steps:i) feature location, which identifies the source code of an individual feature; ii) code analysis and modification, which fixes conflicts that can happen when achieving reuse; and iii) feature integration, which achieves reuse by integrating code into the target system. We also discuss how certain steps in the process are used in current state-of-the-art pragmatic reuse approaches. In addition, based on the experience of developing an approach to pragmatically reusing web application features, we identify general challenges in pragmatic reuse approaches.