Guaranteeing Correct Evolution of Software Product Lines: Setting up the Problem

The research question that we posed ourselves and which has led to this paper is: how can we guarantee the correct functioning of products of an SPL when core components evolve? This exploratory paper merely proposes an overview of a novel approach that, by extending and adapting assume-guarantee reasoning to evolving SPLs, guarantees the resilience against changes in the environment of products of an SPL. The idea is to selectively model check and test assume-guarantee properties on those SPL components affected by the changes.