Software Product Line Engineering (SPLE) is a promising paradigm for reusing knowledge and artifacts among similar software products. However, SPLE methods and techniques require a high up-front investment and hence are profitable if several similar software products are developed. Thus in practice adoption of SPLE commonly takes a bottom-up approach, in which analyzing the commonality and variability of existing products and transforming them into reusable ones (termed core assets) are needed. These time-consuming and error-prone tasks call for automation. The literature partially deals with solutions for early software development stages, mainly in the form of variability analysis. We aim for further creation of core requirements—reusable requirements that can be adapted for different software products. To this end, we introduce an automated extractive method, named CoreReq, to generate core requirements from product requirements written in a natural language. The approach clusters similar requirements, captures variable parts utilizing natural language processing techniques, and generates core requirements following an ontological variability framework. Focusing on cloning scenarios, we evaluated CoreReq through examples and a controlled experiment. Based on the results, we claim that core requirements generation with CoreReq is feasible and usable for specifying requirements of new similar products in cloning scenarios.

中文翻译：

---

提取软件产品线的核心需求

软件产品线工程 (SPLE) 是在类似软件产品之间重用知识和工件的有前途的范例。然而，SPLE 方法和技术需要高额的前期投资，因此如果开发多个类似的软件产品，则是有利可图的。因此，在实践中，SPLE 的采用通常采用自下而上的方法，其中需要分析现有产品的共性和可变性，并将它们转换为可重用的产品（称为核心资产）。这些耗时且容易出错的任务需要自动化。文献部分涉及早期软件开发阶段的解决方案，主要以可变性分析的形式。我们的目标是进一步创建核心需求——可以适应不同软件产品的可重用需求。为此，我们引入了一种名为 CoreReq 的自动提取方法，以从以自然语言编写的产品需求中生成核心需求。该方法对相似的需求进行聚类，利用自然语言处理技术捕获可变部分，并根据本体可变性框架生成核心需求。专注于克隆场景，我们通过示例和受控实验评估了 CoreReq。基于结果，我们声称使用 CoreReq 生成核心需求是可行的，可用于在克隆场景中指定新的类似产品的需求。并根据本体可变性框架生成核心需求。专注于克隆场景，我们通过示例和受控实验评估了 CoreReq。基于结果，我们声称使用 CoreReq 生成核心需求是可行的，可用于在克隆场景中指定新的类似产品的需求。并根据本体可变性框架生成核心需求。专注于克隆场景，我们通过示例和受控实验评估了 CoreReq。基于结果，我们声称使用 CoreReq 生成核心需求是可行的，可用于在克隆场景中指定新的类似产品的需求。