Towards a unified feature metamodel: A systematic comparison of feature languages

Feature models are at the core of Software Product Lines. Along the years different feature modeling languages have been proposed. Although they share a set of core concepts, feature languages present differences such as specification metalanguage, visual and textual emphasis and language constructs, among others. The result of this situation is a contemporary set of dialects with syntax and semantic dissimilarities that hampers interoperability, engineering communication and adoption by practitioners. This paper presents a proposal for a unified feature language metamodel which has been obtained from a comparison of existing metamodels. The analysis includes the maturity evaluation of existing metamodels and their ability to produce well-formed feature models and to reject ill-formed ones. Final conclusions suggest additional work on semantics and pragmatics of feature models.