Unified GUI adaptation in Dynamic Software Product Lines

In the modern world of mobile computing and ubiquitous technology, society is able\ud to interact with technology in new and fascinating ways. To help provide an improved\ud user experience, mobile software should be able to adapt itself to suit the user. By\ud monitoring context information based on the environment and user, the application\ud can better meet the dynamic requirements of the user. Similarly, it is noticeable that\ud programs can require different static changes to suit static requirements. This program\ud commonality and variability can benefit from the use of Software Product Line Engineering,\ud reusing artefacts over a set of similar programs, called a Software Product\ud Line (SPL). Historically, SPLs are limited to handling static compile time adaptations.\ud Dynamic Software Product Lines (DSPL) however, allow for the program configuration\ud to change at runtime, allow for compile time and runtime adaptation to be developed\ud in a single unified approach. While currently DSPLs provide methods for dealing with\ud program logic adaptations, variability in the Graphical User Interface (GUI) has largely\ud been neglected. Due to this, depending on the intended time to apply GUI adaptation,\ud different approaches are required. The main goal of this work is to extend a unified\ud representation of variability to the GUI, whereby GUI adaptation can be applied at\ud compile time and at runtime.\ud In this thesis, an approach to handling GUI adaptation within DSPLs, providing\ud a unified representation of GUI variability is presented. The approach is based on\ud Feature-Oriented Programming (FOP), enabling developers to implement GUI adaptation\ud along with program logic in feature modules. This approach is applied to Document-\ud Oriented GUIs, also known as GUI description languages. In addition to GUI unification,\ud we present an approach to unifying context and feature modelling, and handling\ud context dynamically at runtime, as features of the DSPL. This unification can allow for\ud more dynamic and self-aware context acquisition. To validate our approach, we implemented\ud tool support and middleware prototypes. These different artefacts are then\ud tested using a combination of scenarios and scalability tests. This combination first\ud helps demonstrate the versatility and its relevance of the different approach aspects.\ud It further brings insight into how the approach scales with DSPL size