Software Configuration Management as a Crosscutting Concern: An Example on Software Testing

SCM (Software Configuration Management) has substantially contributed as a mature, reliable and essential technology for successful software development, controlling changes and software evolution. In this scenario, tools that automate SCM have been proposed, developed and used in diverse software engineering activities and processes. However, each SCM tool has usually its particular architecture and data structures. Furthermore, there is a lack of work that investigate reuse and evolvability of such tools. In this paper we propose to see SCM as a crosscutting concern, i.e., as an activity that is spread across or tangled with other software engineering activities, in the same perspective of the AOSD (Aspect-Oriented Software Development). Based on this approach, we present a case study to the development of a SCM tool, named ATCMag, for software testing domain. Preliminary results show the viability of our approach and point out to the possibility of developing reusable and evolvable SCM tools.