Source Code Based Component Recognition in Software Stacks for Embedded Systems

Current trends in embedded systems software aim at an increase of reusability, exchangeability and maintainability and thus at a significant reduction of time- and costs-to-market. One way to reach these goals is the adaption of Component Based Software Engineering (CBSE) for the embedded systems domain. Unfortunately most existing embedded systems applications are realized as coarse-grained layered or even monolithic software that can hardly be reused. This paper demonstrates how to recognize reusable and exchangeable components within existing typically monolithic or stacked embedded systems software via a semi-automatic analysis of the system´s source code. The complexity of the proposed analysis is kept linear to code size by utilizing expert-knowledge on the application-domain, and deployment specific configuration data. To prove our approach, a functional decomposition for an existing automotive middleware stack is calculated and is finally compared to a human designed one.