Analyzing the Impact of Refactoring Variants on Feature Location

Due to the increasing importance of feature location process, several studies evaluate the performance of different techniques based on IR strategies and a set of software variants as input artifacts. The proposed techniques attempt to improve the results obtained but it is often a difficult task. None of the existing feature location techniques considers the changing nature of the input artifacts, which may undergo series of refactoring changes. In this paper, we investigate the impact of refactoring variants on the feature location techniques. We first evaluate the performance of two techniques through the ArgoUML SPL benchmark when the variants are refactored. We then discuss the degraded results and the possibility of restoring them. Finally, we outline a process of variant alignment that aims to preserve the performance of the feature location.