Mathieu Acher

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at University of Rennes

Configuring the Linux kernel to meet specific requirements, such as binary size, is highly challenging due to its immense complexity-with over 15,000 interdependent options evolving rapidly across different versions. Although several studies have explored sampling strategies and machine learning methods to understand and predict the impact of confi...

With the rise of AI-based code generation, customizing existing code out of natural language instructions to modify visual results -such as figures or images -has become possible, promising to reduce the need for deep programming expertise. However, even experienced developers can struggle with this task, as it requires identifying relevant code re...

Large language model (LLM)-based test generation has gained attention in software engineering, yet most studies evaluate LLMs' ability to generate unit tests in a single attempt for a given language, missing the opportunity to leverage LLM diversity for more robust testing. This paper introduces PolyTest, a novel approach that enhances test generat...

Boolean formulae compactly encode huge, constrained search spaces. Thus, variability-intensive systems are often encoded with Boolean formulae. The search space of a variability-intensive system is usually too large to explore without statistical inference (e.g. testing). Testing every valid configuration is computationally expensive (if not imposs...

bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> Context. In Software Engineering, Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) is a methodology that considers Metamodels as a cornerstone. As an abstract artifact, a metamodel plays a significant role in the specification of a software language, particularly, in gene...

Metamodels are cornerstone in MDE. They define the different domain concepts and the relations between them. A metamodel is also used to generate concrete artifacts such as code. Developers then rely on the generated code to build their language services and tooling, e.g., editors, checkers. To check the behavior of their client code, developers wr...

Autonomous systems such as space‐ or underwater‐exploration robots or elderly people assistance robots often include an artificial intelligence (AI) planner as a component. Starting from the initial state of a system, an AI planner automatically generates sequential plans to reach final states that satisfy user‐specified goals. Generating plans hav...

The performance of software systems remains a persistent concern in the field of software engineering. While traditional metrics like binary size and execution time have long been focal points for developers, the power consumption concern has gained significant attention, adding a layer of complexity to performance evaluation. Configurable software...

Models play a significant role in Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) and metamodels are commonly transformed into code. Developers intensively rely on the generated code to build language services and tooling, such as editors and views which are also tested to ensure their behavior. The metamodel evolution between releases updates the generated code, a...

Language models are promising solutions for tackling increasing complex problems. In software engineering, they recently attracted attention in code assistants, with programs automatically written in a given programming language from a programming task description in natural language. They have the potential to save time and effort when writing cod...

Numerous software systems are highly configurable through run-time options, such as command-line parameters. Users can tune some of the options to meet various functional and non-functional requirements such as footprint, security, or execution time. However, some options are never set for a given system instance, and their values remain the same w...

Numerous software systems are configurable through compile-time options and the widely used ./configure. However, the combined effects of these options on binary’s non-functional properties (size and attack surface) are often not documented, and or not well understood, even by experts. Our goal is to provide automated support for exploring and comp...

Widely used software systems such as video encoders are by necessity highly configurable, with hundreds or even thousands of options to choose from. Their users often have a hard time finding suitable values for these options (i.e. finding a proper configuration of the software system) to meet their goals for the tasks at hand, e.g. compress a vide...

With large scale and complex configurable systems, it is hardfor users to choose the right combination of options (i.e., configurations)in order to obtain the wanted trade-off between functionality and per-formance goals such as speed or size. Machine learning can help inrelating these goals to the configurable system options, and thus, predictthe...

Most modern software systems (operating systems like Linux or Android, Web browsers like Firefox or Chrome, video encoders like ffmpeg, x264 or VLC, mobile and cloud applications, etc.) are highly configurable. Hundreds of configuration options, features, or plugins can be combined, each potentially with distinct functionality and effects on execut...

Software product line (SPL) engineering allows the derivation of products tailored to stakeholders’ needs through the setting of a large number of configuration options. Unfortunately, options and their interactions create a huge configuration space which is either intractable or too costly to explore exhaustively. Instead of covering all products,...

Welcome to the third edition of the workshop on Machine Learn- ing Techniques for Software Quality Evaluation (MaLTeSQuE 2019), held in Tallinn, Estonia, August 27th, 2019, co-located with ESEC / FSE 2019. This year MALTESQUE merged with the MASES (Machine Learning and Software Engineering in Symbiosis) work- shop, co-located with the ASE 2018 conf...

Software product line (SPL) engineers put a lot of effort to ensure that, through the setting of a large number of possible configuration options, products are acceptable and well-tailored to customers' needs. Unfortunately, options and their mutual interactions create a huge configuration space which is intractable to exhaustively explore. Instead...

Feature models were invented in 1990 and have been recognised as one of the main contributions to the software product line community. Although there have been several attempts to establish a sort of standard variability modelling language, there is still no consensus. There can be many motivations to have one but there is one that is very importan...

Software product line (SPL) engineers put a lot of effort to ensure that, through the setting of a large number of possible configuration options, products are acceptable and well-tailored to customers' needs. Unfortunately, options and their mutual interactions create a huge configuration space which is intractable to exhaustively explore. Instead...

Education has a key role to play for disseminating the constantly growing body of Software Product Line (SPL) knowledge. In a sense, every researcher in SPL should think about how to teach SPL. This workshop aims to explore and explain the current status and ongoing work on teaching SPLs at universities, colleges, and in industry (e.g., by consulta...

Software Product Line (SPL) migration remains a challenging endeavour. From organizational issues to purely technical challenges, there is a wide range of barriers that complicates SPL adoption. This workshop aims to foster research about making the most of the two main inputs for SPL migration: 1) domain knowledge and 2) legacy assets. Domain know...

The goal of this tutorial is to give an introduction to how machine learning can be used to support activities related to the engineering of configurable systems and software product lines. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first practical tutorial in this trending field. The tutorial is based on a systematic literature review and includes...

The performance of software systems (such as speed, memory usage, correct identification rate) tends to be an evermore important concern, often nowadays on par with functional correctness for critical systems.Systematically testing these performance concerns is however extremely difficult, in particular because there exists no theory underpinning t...

Most modern software systems (operating systems like Linux or Android, Web browsers like Firefox or Chrome, video encoders like ffmpeg, x264 or VLC, mobile and cloud applications, etc.) are highly-configurable. Hundreds of configuration options, features, or plugins can be combined, each potentially with distinct functionality and effects on execut...

Many approaches for testing configurable software systems start from the same assumption: it is impossible to test all configurations. This motivated the definition of variability-aware abstractions and sampling techniques to cope with large configuration spaces. Yet, there is no theoretical barrier that prevents the exhaustive testing of all confi...

In an industrial project, we addressed the challenge of developing a software-based video generator such that consumers and providers of video processing algorithms can benchmark them on a wide range of video variants. This article aims to report on our positive experience in modeling, controlling, and implementing software variability in the video...

Configurators rely on logical constraints over parameters to aid users and determine the validity of a configuration. However, for some domains, capturing such configuration knowledge is hard, if not infeasible. This is the case in the 3D printing industry, where parametric 3D object models contain the list of parameters and their value domains, bu...

Education has a key role to play for disseminating the constantly growing body of Software Product Line (SPL) knowledge. In a sense, every researcher in SPL should think about how to teach SPL. This workshop aims to explore and explain the current status and ongoing work on teaching SPLs at universities, colleges, and in industry (e.g., by consulta...

This extended abstract summarizes our article entitled "Teaching Software Product Lines: A Snapshot of Current Practices and Challenges" published in the ACM Transactions on Computing Education, vol. 18 in 2017 (http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/3088440). The article reports on three initiatives we have conducted with scholars, educators, industry practit...

Ensuring that all supposedly valid configurations of a software product line (SPL) lead to well-formed and acceptable products is challenging since it is most of the time impractical to enumerate and test all individual products of an SPL. Machine learning classifiers have been recently used to predict the acceptability of products associated with...

The functional correctness of a software application is, of course, a prime concern, but other issues such as its execution time, precision, or energy consumption might also be important in some contexts. Systematically testing these quantitative properties is still extremely difficult, in particular, because there exists no method to tell the deve...

Estimating and predicting user subjective perceptions on software products is a challenging, yet increasingly important, endeavour. As an extreme case study, we consider the problem of exploring computer-generated art object combinations that will please the maximum number of people. Since it is not feasible to gather feedbacks for all art products...

How to submit a research paper, a technical report, a grant proposal, or a curriculum vitae that respect imposed constraints such as formatting instructions and page limits? It is a challenging task, especially when coping with time pressure. In this work, we present VaryLATEX, a solution based on variability, constraint programming, and machine le...

Modeling how contextual factors relate to a software system’s configuration space is usually a manual, error-prone task that depends highly on expert knowledge. Machine-learning techniques can automatically predict the acceptable software configurations for a given context. Such an approach executes and observes a sample of software configurations...

Many approaches for testing configurable software systems start from the same assumption: it is impossible to test all configurations. This motivated the definition of variability-aware abstractions and sampling techniques to cope with large configuration spaces. Yet, there is no theoretical barrier that prevents the exhaustive testing of all confi...

Software Product Line (SPL) migration remains a challenging endeavour. From organizational issues to purely technical challenges, there is a wide range of barriers that complicates SPL adoption. The workshop REverse Variability Engineering (REVE) aims to foster research about making the most of the two main inputs for SPL migration: 1) domain knowl...

Software Product Line (SPL) engineering has emerged to provide the means to efficiently model, produce, and maintain multiple similar software variants, exploiting their common properties, and managing their variabilities (differences). With over two decades of existence, the community of SPL researchers and practitioners is thriving, as can be att...

Though variability is everywhere, there has always been a shortage of publicly available cases for assessing variability-aware tools and techniques as well as supports for teaching variability-related concepts. Historical software product lines contains industrial secrets their owners do not want to disclose to a wide audience. The open source comm...

Domain analysts, product managers, or customers aim to capture the important features and differences among a set of related products. A case-by-case reviewing of each product description is a laborious and time-consuming task that fails to deliver a condense view of a family of product. In this article, we investigate the use of automated techniqu...

In systems engineering, practitioners shall explore numerous architectural alternatives until choosing the most adequate variant. The decision-making process is most of the time a manual, time-consuming, and error-prone activity. The exploration and justification of architectural solutions is ad-hoc and mainly consists in a series of tries and erro...

Variability intensive systems may include several thousand features allowing for an enormous number of possible configurations, including wrong ones (e.g. the derived product does not compile). For years, engineers have been using constraints to a priori restrict the space of possible configurations, i.e. to exclude configurations that would violat...

Feature models are widely used to encode the configurations of a software product line in terms of mandatory, optional and exclusive features as well as propositional constraints over the features. Numerous computationally expensive procedures have been developed to model check, test, configure, debug, or compute relevant information of feature mod...

From organizational issues to purely technical challenges, there is a wide range of barriers that complicates Software Product Line (SPL) adoption. This workshop aims to foster research about making the most of two main inputs for SPL migration: 1) domain knowledge and 2) existing legacy assets. Domain knowledge, usually implicit and spread across...

By analogy with software product reuse, the ability to reuse (meta)models and model transformations is key to achieve better quality and productivity. To this end, various opportunistic reuse techniques have been developed, such as higher-order transformations, metamodel adaptation, and model types. However, in contrast to software product developm...

Online configurators are basically everywhere. From physical goods (cars, clothes) to services (cloud solutions, insurances, etc.) such configurators have pervaded many areas of everyday life, in order to provide the customers products tailored to their needs. Being sometimes the only interfaces between product suppliers and consumers, much care ha...

Unbundling is a phenomenon that consists of dividing an existing software artifact into smaller ones. It can happen for different reasons, one of them is the fact that applications tend to grow in functionalities and sometimes this can negatively influence the user experience. For example, mobile applications from well-known companies are being div...

This paper presents a formal analysis framework to analyze a family of platform products w.r.t. real-time properties. First, we propose an extension of the widely-used feature model, called Property Feature Model (PFM), that distinguishes features and properties explicitly Second, we present formal behavioral models of components of a real-time sch...

What do you give for free to your competitor when you exhibit a product line? This paper addresses this question through several cases in which the discovery of trade secrets of a product line is possible and can lead to severe consequences. That is, we show that an outsider can understand the variability realization and gain either confidential bu...

Domain analysts, product managers, or customers aim to capture the important features and differences among a set of related products. A case-by-case reviewing of each product description is a laborious and time-consuming task that fails to deliver a condensed view of a product line. This paper introduces MatrixMiner: a tool for automatically synth...

Companies increasingly rely on product differentiation and personalization strategies to provide their customers with an expansive catalog, and tools to assist them in finding the product meeting their needs. These tools include product search facilities, recommender systems, and product configurators. They typically represent a product as a set of...