Paving a Path for a Combined Family of Feature Toggle and Configuration Option Research

Abstract

Feature toggles and configuration options are techniques to include or exclude functionality in software. The research contributions to these two techniques have most often been focused on either one of them. However, focusing on the similarities of these two techniques and the use of a common terminology may enable a combined family of research on software configuration (a term we use to encompass both techniques) and prevent duplication of effort. The goal of this study is to aid researchers in conducting a family of research on software configuration by extending an existing model of software configuration that provides a common terminology for feature toggles and configuration options in research studies. We started with Siegmund et al.’s Model of Software Configuration (MSC), which was developed based on configuration option-related resources. We extend the MSC by qualitative analysis of feature toggle-related resources. From our analysis, we proposed MSCv2 and evaluated it through its application on publications and an industrial system. Our results indicate researchers studying the same system may provide different definitions of software configuration in publications, similar research questions may be answered repeatedly because of a lack of a clear definition of software configuration, and having a model of software configuration may enable generalized research on this family of research. 1