Abstract

Most software reuse research has ignored the role of the software engineer. However, software engineers tend to be better reasoners and have more experiences to recall than tool-based reuse mechanisms. This paper argues for integrating software engineers into existing reuse paradigms and providing tool support to assist problem description and component understanding, selection and adaptation. However, empirical studies indicate that these reuse tasks are difficult, even for experienced software engineers. Therefore, guidelines and a high-level architecture for design of tool support are based on reports of behaviour and problems arising during reuse.

Citations