publications

2026

1. SBES

   An Empirical Evaluation of Using Large Language Models to Recommend Exception Handling Tasks

   Jairo Souza, Tales Alves, Rodrigo Lima, Ericlecio Araujo, Leopoldo Teixeira, and Baldoino Fonseca

   In Proceedings of the XL Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering, São Paulo, Brazil, 2026
2. SBES

   Evaluator Bias in LLM-Based Program Repair: A Disagreement Analysis on Android Resource Leaks

   Andrezza Bonfim, and Leopoldo Teixeira

   In Proceedings of the XL Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering, São Paulo, Brazil, 2026
3. SBES

   Dependency Version Migration in Software Projects: A Rapid Review of Motivations, Techniques, Tools, and Challenges

   Arthur Bezerra Silva, Leopoldo Teixeira, Wesley K. G. Assunção, and Bruno Cartaxo

   In Proceedings of the XL Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering, São Paulo, Brazil, 2026
4. JBCS

   Integrating ZBus into Zephyr RTOS: An Experience Report of Knowledge Transfer from Academia to Industry Through Open-Source Contributions

   Rodrigo Peixoto, Leopoldo Teixeira, and Baldoino Fonseca

   Journal of the Brazilian Computer Society, Jun 2026
5. EASE

   Can Small LLMs Detect Defect-Prone Code Smells? An Empirical Evaluation of 8B-30B Models Against a Ground-Truth Dataset

   Rodrigo Lima, Jairo Souza, Baldoino Fonseca, Leopoldo Teixeira, and Márcio Ribeiro

   In International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering - AI Models/Data track, Jun 2026

   Abs

   Code smells are structural indicators of design problems, yet not all smells are equally harmful—only a fraction co-occurs with actual software defects. While Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly used for code analysis tasks, most evaluations rely on large proprietary models (e.g., GPT-4, Claude), leaving open whether smaller, locally deployable models can perform comparably. More importantly, the ability of any LLM to distinguish defect-prone (harmful) smells from benign ones remains underexplored. We present an empirical study evaluating four small, open-source LLMs (8B–30B parameters: Qwen3-Coder 30B, DeepSeek-Coder-V2 16B, Llama 3.1 8B, and Granite 3.1 Dense 8B)—all runnable on consumer hardware via Ollama—on two tasks: (1) detecting code smells in real-world code, and (2) classifying detected smells as harmful (co-occurring with bugs) or merely smelly. We build a metric-augmented SZZ dataset comprising 269,513 code smell instances and 13,590 bug locations mined from 10 open-source Java and Python projects via static analysis and the SZZ algorithm, from which we draw a stratified sample of 1,200 labeled snippets (600 harmful, 600 merely smelly) for LLM evaluation. Our results show that small LLMs achieve variable accuracy for smell detection (average F1: 0.20–0.67 depending on model and prompting strategy), with substantial variation across smell types—God Class (F1 up to 0.88) and Long Method (F1 up to 0.81) are detected reliably, while design smells like Feature Envy and Inappropriate Intimacy remain challenging for most models. For the novel harmfulness classification task, all models achieve MCC values near zero (−0.19 to 0.10), revealing a fundamental gap: even when small LLMs recognize structural anomalies, they cannot reliably assess their defect-inducing potential from code alone. Notably, prompting strategy has a dramatic model-dependent effect—one-shot prompting doubles Llama 3.1’s detection F1 from 0.25 to 0.67, while chain-of-thought is most effective for Qwen3-Coder. We release our labeled dataset and evaluation framework as reusable artifacts for future research on AI-driven code quality assessment.

6. MSR

   Test Coverage of Code Changes in AI-Generated Pull Requests

   Tales Alves, and Leopoldo Teixeira

   In International Conference on Mining Software Repositories - Mining Challenge Track, Apr 2026

2025

1. SAST

   Evaluating the Effectiveness of LLMs in Multimodal GUI Test Generation for Android Mobile Applications

   Nayse Fagundes, and Leopoldo Teixeira

   In Brazilian Symposium on Systematic and Automated Software Testing, Sep 2025
2. SBLP

   An Interpreter-based Framework for Static Analysis of Variability in Space and Time

   Tayná Vieira, Vander Alves, and Leopoldo Teixeira

   In Brazilian Symposium on Programming Languages, Sep 2025
3. JSERD

   Exploring Transfer Learning for Multilingual Software Quality: Code Smells, Bugs, and Harmful Code

   Rodrigo Lima, Durval Pereira, Caio Barbosa, Leonardo Leite, Davy Baia, Baldoino Fonseca, Leopoldo Teixeira, and Jairo Souza

   Journal of Software Engineering Research and Development, Sep 2025

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2024

1. OOPSLA

   On the Expressive Power of Languages for Static Variability

   Paul Maximilian Bittner, Alexander Schultheiß, Benjamin Moosherr, Jeffrey M. Young, Leopoldo Teixeira, Eric Walkingshaw, Parisa Ataei, and Thomas Thüm

   Proc. ACM Program. Lang., Oct 2024

   Abs PDF

   Variability permeates software development to satisfy ever-changing requirements and mass-customization needs. A prime example is the Linux kernel, which employs the C preprocessor to specify a set of related but distinct kernel variants. To study, analyze, and verify variational software, several formal languages have been proposed. For example, the choice calculus has been successfully applied for type checking and symbolic execution of configurable software, while other formalisms have been used for variational model checking, change impact analysis, among other use cases. Yet, these languages have not been formally compared, hence, little is known about their relationships. Crucially, it is unclear to what extent one language subsumes another, how research results from one language can be applied to other languages, and which language is suitable for which purpose or domain. In this paper, we propose a formal framework to compare the expressive power of languages for static (i.e., compile-time) variability. By establishing a common semantic domain to capture a widely used intuition of explicit variability, we can formulate the basic, yet to date neglected, properties of soundness, completeness, and expressiveness for variability languages. We then prove the (un)soundness and (in)completeness of a range of existing languages, and relate their ability to express the same variational systems. We implement our framework as an extensible open source Agda library in which proofs act as correct compilers between languages or differencing algorithms. We find different levels of expressiveness as well as complete and incomplete languages w.r.t. our unified semantic domain, with the choice calculus being among the most expressive languages.

2. ASE

   Blackbox Observability of Features and Feature Interactions

   Kallistos Weis, Leopoldo Teixeira, Clemens Dubslaff, and Sven Apel

   In Proceedings of the 39th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering, Oct 2024

   Abs PDF

   Configurable software systems offer user-selectable features to tailor them to the target hardware and user requirements. It is almost a rule that, as the number of features increases over time, unintended and inadvertent feature interactions arise. Despite numerous definitions of feature interactions and methods for detecting them, there is no procedure for determining whether the effect of a feature interaction could be, in principle, observed from an external perspective. In this paper, we devise a decision procedure to verify whether the effect of a given feature or potential feature interaction could be isolated by blackbox observations of a set of system configurations. For this purpose, we introduce the notion of blackbox observability, which is based on recent work on counterfactual reasoning on configuration decisions. Direct observability requires a single reference configuration to isolate the effect in question, while the broader notion of general observability relaxes this precondition and suffices with a set of reference configurations. We report on a series of experiments on community benchmarks as well as real-world configuration spaces and models. We found that (1) deciding observability is indeed tractable in real-world settings, (2) constraints in real-world configuration spaces frequently limit observability, and (3) blackbox performance models often include effects that are de facto not observable.

3. SBES

   Exception Miner: Multi-language Static Analysis Tool to Identify Exception Handling Anti-Patterns

   Jairo Souza, Tales Alves, Robson Oliveira, Leopoldo Teixeira, and Baldoino Fonseca

   In Proceedings of the XXXVIII Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering, Curitiba, Brazil, Oct 2024

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4. SQJ

   Towards Effective Gamification of Existing Systems: Method and Experience Report

   Anderson Uchôa, Rafael Mello, Jairo Souza, Leopoldo Teixeira, Baldoino Fonseca, and Alessandro Garcia

   Software Quality Journal, Oct 2024

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5. JSERD

   Investigating the Social Representations of Harmful Code

   Rodrigo Lima, Jairo Souza, Baldoino Fonseca, Leopoldo Teixeira, Rafael Maiani, Márcio Ribeiro, Alessandro Garcia, and Rohit Gheyi

   Journal of Software Engineering Research and Development, Apr 2024

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2023

1. SBQS

   Do you see any problem? On the Developers Perceptions in Test Smells Detection

   Rodrigo Lima, Keila Costa, Jairo Souza, Leopoldo Teixeira, Baldoino Fonseca, Marcelo d’Amorim, Márcio Ribeiro, and Breno Miranda

   In Proceedings of the XXII Brazilian Symposium on Software Quality, SBQS 2023, Brasilia, Brazil, November 7-10, Apr 2023

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2. IST

   Towards a better understanding of the mechanics of refactoring detection tools

   Jonhnanthan Oliveira, Rohit Gheyi, Leopoldo Teixeira, Márcio Ribeiro, Osmar Leandro, and Baldoino Fonseca

   Information and Software Technology, Apr 2023

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2022

1. SBES

   A Technique to Test Refactoring Detection Tools

   Osmar Leandro, Rohit Gheyi, Leopoldo Teixeira, Márcio Ribeiro, and Alessandro F. Garcia

   In SBES 2022: XXXVI Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering, Virtual Event Brazil, October 5 - 7, Apr 2022

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2. SBES

   A Decade of Internationalization of the Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

   Nabor Mendonça, Leopoldo Teixeira, Sérgio Soares, Vinicius Cardoso Garcia, Uirá Kulesza, César França, Daniel Lucrédio, Elder Cirilo, and Ivan Machado

   In SBES 2022: XXXVI Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering, Virtual Event Brazil, October 5 - 7, Apr 2022

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3. IEEE Access

   Distributed Repository for Software Packages Using Blockchain

   Felipe Zimmerle N. Costa, Ruy J. G. B. Queiroz, Gustavo P. Bittencourt, and Leopoldo Teixeira

   IEEE Access, Apr 2022

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4. SoSym

   Guiding the Evolution of Product-Line Configurations

   Michael Nieke, Gabriela Sampaio, Thomas Thüm, Christoph Seidl, Leopoldo Teixeira, and Ina Schaefer

   Software and Systems Modeling (SoSyM), Apr 2022

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2021

1. ASE

   Shaker: a Tool for Detecting More Flaky Tests Faster

   Marcello Cordeiro, Denini Silva, Leopoldo Teixeira, Breno Miranda, and Marcelo d’Amorim

   In IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (Tool Demonstrations), Nov 2021

   Code
2. SBLP

   TSDolly: A program generator for TypeScript

   Gabriela Araujo Britto, Leopoldo Teixeira, and Rohit Gheyi

   In Brazilian Symposium on Programming Languages, Sep 2021

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3. SBES

   Evolving Delta-Oriented Product Lines: A Case Study on Feature Interaction, Safe and Partially Safe Evolution

   Leomar Camargo, Luisa Fantin, Gabriel Lobão, Thiago Figueiredo, Rodrigo Bonifacio, Karine Gomes, and Leopoldo Teixeira

   In Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering, Sep 2021

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4. TOSEM

   A Formal Framework of Software Product Line Analyses

   Thiago Castro, Leopoldo Teixeira, Vander Alves, Sven Apel, Maxime Cordy, and Rohit Gheyi

   ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM), Apr 2021

   PDF Code
5. ICSE

   Shipwright: A Human-in-the-Loop System for Dockerfile Repair

   Jordan Henkel, Denini Silva, Leopoldo Teixeira, Marcelo d’Amorim, and Thomas W. Reps

   In IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering, May 2021

   arXiv PDF Code
6. ICST

   Demystifying the Challenges to Formally Specifying API Properties for Runtime Verification

   Leopoldo Teixeira, Breno Miranda, Henrique Rebelo, and Marcelo d’Amorim

   In IEEE International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation, Apr 2021

   PDF Code
7. IST

   Identifying method-level mutation subsumption relations using Z3

   Rohit Gheyi, Márcio Ribeiro, Beatriz Souza, Marcio Augusto Guimarães, Leo Fernandes, Marcelo d’Amorim, Vander Alves, Leopoldo Teixeira, and Baldoino Fonseca

   Information and Software Technology, Apr 2021

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2020

1. ICSME

   Shake It! Detecting Flaky Tests Caused by Concurrency with Shaker

   Denini Silva, Leopoldo Teixeira, and Marcelo d’Amorim

   In IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution, Sep 2020

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2. SBES

   A Catalog of Object-Relational Mapping Code Smells for Java

   Samuel Loli, Leopoldo Teixeira, and Bruno Cartaxo

   In Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering, Oct 2020

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3. SBES

   Understanding and Detecting Harmful Code

   Rodrigo Lima, Jairo Souza, Baldoino Fonseca, Leopoldo Teixeira, Rohit Gheyi, Márcio Ribeiro, Alessandro F. Garcia, and Rafael Maiani Mello

   In Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering, Oct 2020

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4. SBMF

   Porting the Software Product Line Refinement Theory to the Coq Proof Assistant

   Thayonara Alves, Leopoldo Teixeira, Vander Alves, and Thiago M. Castro

   In Brazilian Symposium on Formal Methods: Foundations and Applications, Nov 2020

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5. SBMF

   Safe Evolution of Product Lines Using Configuration Knowledge Laws

   Leopoldo Teixeira, Rohit Gheyi, and Paulo Borba

   In Brazilian Symposium on Formal Methods: Foundations and Applications, Nov 2020

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6. GuyDance: Guiding Configuration Updates for Product-Line Evolution

   Michael Nieke, Gabriela Sampaio, Thomas Thüm, Christoph Seidl, Leopoldo Teixeira, and Ina Schaefer

   In International Workshop on Variability and Evolution of Software-Intensive Systems, co-located with SPLC 2020, Oct 2020

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7. SANER

   On the Adoption of Kotlin on Android Development: A Triangulation Study

   Victor Oliveira, Leopoldo Teixeira, and Felipe Ebert

   In IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering, Feb 2020

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2019

1. JSS

   Partially safe evolution of software product lines

   Gabriela Sampaio, Paulo Borba, and Leopoldo Teixeira

   Journal of Systems and Software, Feb 2019

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2. On gamifying an existing healthcare system: method, conceptual model and evaluation

   Anderson G. Uchôa, Eduardo Fernandes, Baldoino Fonseca, Rafael Maiani Mello, Caio Barbosa, Gabriel Nunes, Alessandro Garcia, and Leopoldo Teixeira

   In International Workshop on Software Engineering for Healthcare, co-located with ICSE 2019, May 2019

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3. SBES

   Willow: A Tool for Interactive Programming Visualization to Help in the Data Structures and Algorithms Teaching-Learning Process

   Pedro Moraes, and Leopoldo Teixeira

   In Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering - Insightful Ideas & Emerging Results Track, Sep 2019

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4. Towards efficient analysis of variation in time and space

   Thomas Thüm, Leopoldo Teixeira, Klaus Schmid, Eric Walkingshaw, Mukelabai Mukelabai, Mahsa Varshosaz, Goetz Botterweck, Ina Schaefer, and Timo Kehrer

   In International Workshop on Variability and Evolution of Software-Intensive Systems, co-located with SPLC 2019, Sep 2019

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5. VaMoS

   Characterizing safe and partially safe evolution scenarios in product lines: An Empirical Study

   Karine Gomes, Leopoldo Teixeira, Thayonara Alves, Márcio Ribeiro, and Rohit Gheyi

   In International Workshop on Variability Modelling of Software-Intensive Systems, Feb 2019

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2018

1. ComLan

   A change-aware per-file analysis to compile configurable systems with #ifdefs

   Larissa Braz, Rohit Gheyi, Melina Mongiovi, Márcio Ribeiro, Flávio Medeiros, Leopoldo Teixeira, and Sabrina Souto

   Computer Languages, Systems and Structures, Feb 2018

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2. SCP

   All roads lead to Rome: Commuting strategies for product-line reliability analysis

   Thiago M. Castro, André Lanna, Vander Alves, Leopoldo Teixeira, Sven Apel, and Pierre-Yves Schobbens

   Science of Computer Programming, Feb 2018

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3. TSE

   Detecting Overly Strong Preconditions in Refactoring Engines

   Melina Mongiovi, Rohit Gheyi, Gustavo Soares, Márcio Ribeiro, Paulo Borba, and Leopoldo Teixeira

   IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Feb 2018

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4. SAST

   Testing Strategies for Smart Cities applications: A Systematic Mapping Study

   Alex Costa, and Leopoldo Teixeira

   In Brazilian Symposium on Systematic and Automated Software Testing, Sep 2018

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2016

1. EMSE

   Coevolution of variability models and related software artifacts - A fresh look at evolution patterns in the Linux kernel

   Leonardo Teixeira Passos, Leopoldo Teixeira, Nicolas Dintzner, Sven Apel, Andrzej Wasowski, Krzysztof Czarnecki, Paulo Borba, and Jianmei Guo

   Empirical Software Engineering, Sep 2016

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2. GPCE

   A change-centric approach to compile configurable systems with #ifdefs

   Larissa Braz, Rohit Gheyi, Melina Mongiovi, Márcio Ribeiro, Flávio Medeiros, and Leopoldo Teixeira

   In ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Generative Programming: Concepts and Experiences, Oct 2016

   PDF
3. SBCARS

   Safe Evolution of Software Product Lines: Feature Extraction Scenarios

   Fernando Benbassat, Paulo Borba, and Leopoldo Teixeira

   In Brazilian Symposium on Software Components, Architectures and Reuse, Sep 2016

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4. SPLC

   Partially safe evolution of software product lines

   Gabriela Sampaio, Paulo Borba, and Leopoldo Teixeira

   In International Systems and Software Product Line Conference, Sep 2016

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2015

1. JSS

   Safe evolution templates for software product lines

   Laı́s Neves, Paulo Borba, Vander Alves, Lucinéia Turnes, Leopoldo Teixeira, Demóstenes Sena, and Uirá Kulesza

   Journal of Systems and Software, Sep 2015

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2. GPCE

   An empirical study on configuration-related issues: investigating undeclared and unused identifiers

   Flávio Medeiros, Iran Rodrigues, Márcio Ribeiro, Leopoldo Teixeira, and Rohit Gheyi

   In ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Generative Programming: Concepts and Experiences, Oct 2015

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3. SPLC

   A product line of theories for reasoning about safe evolution of product lines

   Leopoldo Teixeira, Vander Alves, Paulo Borba, and Rohit Gheyi

   In International Conference on Software Product Lines, Jul 2015

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4. SPLC

   Safe evolution of product populations and multi product lines

   Leopoldo Teixeira, Paulo Borba, and Rohit Gheyi

   In International Conference on Software Product Lines, Jul 2015

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2014

1. RE

   Evaluating scenario-based SPL requirements approaches: the case for modularity, stability and expressiveness

   Mauricio Alférez, Rodrigo Bonifácio, Leopoldo Teixeira, Paola R. G. Accioly, Uirá Kulesza, Ana Moreira, João Araújo, and Paulo Borba

   Requirements Engineering, Jul 2014

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2. SCP

   Making refactoring safer through impact analysis

   Melina Mongiovi, Rohit Gheyi, Gustavo Soares, Leopoldo Teixeira, and Paulo Borba

   Science of Computer Programming, Jul 2014

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3. SEKE

   On the Requirements and Design Decisions of an In-House Component-Based SPL Automated Environment

   Elder Macedo Rodrigues, Leonardo Teixeira Passos, Leopoldo Teixeira, Avelino F. Zorzo, Flávio Moreira Oliveira, and Rodrigo S. Saad

   In International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering, Jul 2014

2013

1. JSS

   Safe composition of configuration knowledge-based software product lines

   Leopoldo Teixeira, Paulo Borba, and Rohit Gheyi

   Journal of Systems and Software, Jul 2013

   PDF
2. SPLC

   Coevolution of variability models and related artifacts: a case study from the Linux kernel

   Leonardo Teixeira Passos, Jianmei Guo, Leopoldo Teixeira, Krzysztof Czarnecki, Andrzej Wasowski, and Paulo Borba

   In International Software Product Line Conference, Aug 2013

   PDF

2012

1. TCS

   A theory of software product line refinement

   Paulo Borba, Leopoldo Teixeira, and Rohit Gheyi

   Theoretical Computer Science, Aug 2012

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2011

1. GPCE

   Investigating the safe evolution of software product lines

   Laı́s Neves, Leopoldo Teixeira, Demóstenes Sena, Vander Alves, Uirá Kulesza, and Paulo Borba

   In International Conference on Generative Programming And Component Engineering, Oct 2011

   PDF
2. SBES

   Safe Composition of Configuration Knowledge-Based Software Product Lines

   Leopoldo Teixeira, Paulo Borba, and Rohit Gheyi

   In Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering, Sep 2011

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2010

1. FOSD

   Assessment of product derivation tools in the evolution of software product lines: an empirical study

   Mário Henrique C. Torres, Uirá Kulesza, Matheus Sousa, Thaı́s Vasconcelos Batista, Leopoldo Teixeira, Paulo Borba, Elder Cirilo, Carlos José Pereira Lucena, Rosana T. V. Braga, and Paulo Cesar Masiero

   In International Workshop on Feature-Oriented Software Development, Oct 2010
2. ICTAC

   A Theory of Software Product Line Refinement

   Paulo Borba, Leopoldo Teixeira, and Rohit Gheyi

   In International Colloquium on Theoretical Aspects of Computing, Sep 2010

   PDF
3. Onward!

   Emergent feature modularization

   Márcio Ribeiro, Humberto Pacheco, Leopoldo Teixeira, and Paulo Borba

   In ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Systems, Programming, Languages and Applications: Software for Humanity SPLASH/OOPSLA, Sep 2010

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2009

1. SBCARS

   Hephaestus: A tool for managing SPL variabilities

   Rodrigo Bonifácio, Leopoldo Teixeira, and Paulo Borba

   In Tools Session of the Brazilian Symposium on Software Components, Architectures, and Reuse, Sep 2009

   PDF