Transitioning legacy assets to a product line architecture

A successful software system evolves over time, but this evolution often occurs in an ad-hoc fashion. One approach to structure system evolution is the concept of software product lines where a core architecture supports a variety of application contexts. However, in practice, the high cost and high risks of redevelopment as well as the substantial investments made to develop the existing systems most often mandate significant leverage of the legacy assets. Yet, there is little guidance in the literature on how to transition legacy assets into a product line set-up.In this paper, we present RE-PLACE, an approach developed to support the transition of existing software assets towards a product line architecture while taking into account anticipated new system variants. We illustrate this approach with its application in an industrial setting.