Christian Kästner
News · Research · Publications · Teaching · Team · Misc
 

Christian Kästner

[pronunciation and spelling]

Associate Professor · Carnegie Mellon University · Institute for Software Research

 
Christian Kästner

I am an associate professor in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. My current work focuses on AI engineering (engineering AI-powered software systems): How to responsibly build, test, and operate production software when AI components are unreliable and lack clear specifications. A second focus is on software supply-chain security and the sustainability of the open-source ecosystems that nearly all modern software depends on. Previously I worked a lot on reuse and variability at scale. A common thread through my work is imperfect modularity: I study where modularity breaks down and how tooling, evidence, and process can help developers cope, which naturally brings me to questions of quality assurance, requirements, and feature interactions. My research combines rigorous empirical research with program analysis and tool building.

I currently serve as the director of the CMU Software Engineering Ph.D. Program.

Profiles: Curriculum vitae, Google Scholar, ACM, dblp, Google+ .

Software and Societal Systems Department (S3D)
School of Computer Science
Carnegie Mellon University
 
Office: TCS 345
Email: kaestner (at) cs.cmu.edu
Mailing Address: C. Kaestner, S3D - TCS Hall 430, 4665 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA

 
 
 

News News feed

 
8 Apr. 2025
Book release
The Machine Learning in Production book is finally out in print (and ebook) format. MIT Press has all the details:
 
7 Jan. 2025
Talk: From Models to Products: On the Role of Software Engineering for Machine Learning
I substantially updated my talk pitching better software engineering for building ML products with a focus on quality assurance both at the model and the system level. I originally gave this as a CAIN keynote in 2024 and several times since. Here is a recording of the talk at the University of Paderborn:
 
15 Jan. 2024
Machine Learning in Production Book finished and submitted to publisher
Over the last two years, I was writing and refining a book on software engineering for building products with machine learning components, based on our course Machine Learning in Production. I have released as chapters incrementally on Medium. I have finally declared the project as complete and handed over the manuscript to the publisher MIT Press and expect a formal release in about one year. The book remains under a creative commons license and the public (not yet finally copyedited) version of the book is now live at https://mlip-cmu.github.io/book/.
 
 
Older News...
 
 
 

Research

 
 

My broad goal in research is to help software engineers build complex systems in the real world, and to do so responsibly. My group and I work in three main areas: engineering AI-powered software systems, software supply-chain security, and scaling software variability and reuse. Methodologically, I lean on empirical methods and pragmatic tool building, often in interdisciplinary collaborations spanning AI, human-computer interaction, security, and the social sciences.

 
 
A unifying theme: imperfect modularity. Modularity is our central principle for managing complexity, but it rests on assumptions that are often unrealistic in real systems: stable requirements, interface specifications that capture all interactions, and internals that can be hidden behind clean abstractions. Much of my work explores exactly the places where modularity breaks down (feature interactions, breaking changes across ecosystems, and AI components that are fundamentally anti-modular) and how tooling, evidence, and process can help developers cope.
 
 
Current focus

AI Engineering / AI-Powered Software Systems

Software systems increasingly rely on AI components for core functionality, opening up capabilities that were previously out of reach, but also breaking traditional assumptions about specifications, testing, and modularity. AI components are fundamentally unreliable, yet the engineering needed to build dependable systems around them is rarely taken seriously in practice. Much of my research and teaching focuses on how to responsibly build software with AI components, sometimes called AI engineering: improving collaboration between software engineers and data scientists, grounding testing in requirements engineering, and designing for safety, risk, and production operation. More recently, AI coding agents are disrupting how software itself is built, raising the urgency further.

Representative work: interdisciplinary collaboration [ICSE 2022], grounding model testing in system requirements [EMNLP 2023, ASE 2024, ICSE-NIER 2023, ACL 2026], anticipating and mitigating model mistakes [CHI 2026, CAIN 2025, arXiv 2026], and the open-access textbook Machine Learning in Production [MIT Press 2025]. Related publications →
 
 
Current focus

Software Supply Chain Security / Open Source Sustainability

Nearly all modern software is built on open source, the critical infrastructure maintained largely by volunteers with no formal obligation to the many projects that depend on them. This makes the software supply chain a growing security concern: malicious package updates, compromised dependencies, and fake or abandoned projects can ripple across the ecosystem, while the trust signals developers have long relied on are eroding. My research studies these threats empirically and builds interventions that help: lightweight sandboxes for risky dependencies, tools that flag suspicious updates, and notifications for abandoned dependencies. This work sits within a broader interest in how open-source communities collaborate, sustain themselves, and cope with change. This work is supported by the NSF Frontier Secure Software Supply Chain Center (S3C2).

Representative work: sandboxing [ICSE 2021], fake stars [ICSE 2026], dependency abandonment [ESEC/FSE 2023, ICSE 2025, ICSE 2026], and coordination across forks in open source [ESEC/FSE 2019, ICSE 2020]. — related publications →
 
 
Earlier work

Scaling Software Variability and Reuse

Variability and reuse are how complex modern software scales: a single configurable codebase like the Linux kernel or a modern web framework can serve millions of distinct use cases. But that leverage comes at a cost when thousands of interacting options create combinatorial spaces that resist traditional testing, leaving defects that hide in specific configurations. My earlier research championed pragmatic, disciplined variability management with tooling rather than new language constructs, and showed how to scale analyses across exponential configuration spaces—such as type-checking all 214k compile-time configurations of the Linux kernel using SAT solvers. The tools we built, like CIDE and TypeChef, were adopted widely in the research community.

Representative work: variability-aware parsing and analysis that scales to the Linux kernel [OOPSLA 2011, TOSEM 2018], testing and debugging highly configurable systems [ICSE 2022, ICSE 2016, TSE 2018], and performance-influence models [ESEC/FSE 2015, ESEC/FSE 2018]. — related publications →
 
 
 

Teaching

 
PRG
 
Spring 2026
 
Fall 2025
 
Fall 2024
 
Spring 2024
 
Fall 2023
 
Spring 2023
 
 
See also the full teaching history.
 
 
 

Team

 
Team photo Dec. 2017
 
Graduated
 
Former students and visitors
 
REU Students
 
 
 

Service

TOSEM (Associate Editor, 2019-2022)
 
ICSE 2027 (Shadow PC Chair), ICSE 2027 (PC), CAIN 2027 (PC Co-Chair), ICSE 2026 (Shadow PC Chair), ICSE 2026 (Area Chair), CAIN 2025 (PC), OOPSLA 2025 (PC), FSE 2025 (PC), ICSE 2024 (PC), CAIN 2024 (PC), FSE 2024 (PC), ICSE 2024 (PC), CAIN 2023 (PC), ICSE 2022 (Conference Chair, PC), ASE 2021 (PC), ESEC/FSE 2021 (PC), ASE 2020 (PC), SPLC 2020 (PC), ICSE 2020 (PC, SMP Chair), ESEC/FSE 2019 (PC, JF Chair), ASE 2019 (PC), SPLC 2019 (PC), OOPSLA 2019 (ERC), ICSE 2019 (SMP Chair), ICSE-NIER 2019 (PC), ASE 2018 (PC Co-Chair), ICSE 2018 (PC), SE 2018 (PC), ECOOP 2017 (PC), ASE 2017 (PC, DS Chair), ICSE 2017 (PC), ESEC/FSE 2017 (PC), ASE 2016 (ERC), ECOOP 2016 (ERC), SPLC 2016 (PC), MV 2016 (PC), ASE 2015 (DS), ASE 2015 (PC), SBCARS 2015 (PC), SPLC 2015 (PC), GPCE 2015 (General Chair), SPLC 2014 (PC), ASE 2014 (PC), ECOOP 2014 (ERC), MV 2014 (PC), GPCE 2014 (SC), OOPSLA 2013 (PC), GPCE 2013 (PC Chair), SE 2013 (PC), GPCE 2012 (PC), SC 2011 (PC), GPCE 2011 (PC)
 
SQA4AI 2025 (PC), VaMoS 2023 (PC), VaMoS 2021 (PC), VaMoS 2020 (PC), VaMoS 2019 (PC), SPLTea 2018 (PC), VaMoS 2018 (PC), WAPI 2017 (PC), VaMoS 2017 (PC), RELENG 2016 (PC), VaMoS 2016 (PC), VaMoS 2015 (PC), SPLTea 2015 (PC), ICSE-D 2015 (PC), MultiPLE 2014 (PC), SPLat 2014 (PC), SPLTea 2014 (PC), REVE 2014 (PC), FOSD 2014 (OC), ICSE-TB 2014 (PC), VaMoS 2014 (PC), SCORE 2013 (PC), MPLE 2013 (PC), FOSD 2013 (OC), VaMoS 2013 (PC), REVE 2013 (PC), SLE-DS 2012 (PC), FOSD 2012 (OC), SPLC-TD 2012 (PC), NFPinDSML 2012 (PC), RAM-SE 2012 (PC), ESCOT 2012 (OC), MISS 2012 (PC), PEPM 2012 (PC), VaMoS 2012 (PC), FOSD 2011 (OC), FREECO 2011 (PC), FOSD 2010 (OC), ASE-TD 2010 (PC), PLEERPS 2010 (PC), FOSD 2009 (OC)
 
 
 

Blog posts, video, and other media

 
Talk, Jan. 2025
From Models to Products: On the Role of Software Engineering for Machine Learning | CAIN'24 Keynote
 
Website, Aug. 2023
Secure Software Supply Chain Center
 
Talk, May. 2022
From Models to Systems: Rethinking the Role of Software Engineering for Machine Learning | MSR'22 Keynote
 
Talk, Mar. 2021
Toward a System-Wide and Interdisciplinary Perspective on ML System Performance | FastPath'21 Workshop Keynote
 
Blog post, Mar. 2021
Rediscovering Unit Testing: Testing Capabilities of ML Models
 
Blog post, Jan. 2021
Why Robustness is not Enough for Safety and Security in Machine Learning
 
Blog post, Nov. 2020
On the Process for Building Software with ML Components
 
Blog post, Oct. 2020
The World and the Machine and Responsible Machine Learning
 
Talk, Sep. 2020
State of the Source 2020: Analyzing Tens of Terabytes of Public Trace Data & Open Source Sustainabilty (w/ B. Vasilescu)
 
Podcast, Sep. 2020
What the Fork? Shurui Zhou on Forking in Open Source | Sustain Podcast (by S. Zhou)
 
Lecture, Aug. 2020
Complete Lecture Recordings: Software Engineering for AI-Enabled Systems
 
Infographic, Jun. 2020
Infographic: Donations in Open Source (by C. Overney)
 
Talk, Jun. 2020
Engineering AI-Enabled Systems with Interdisciplinary Teams | SEMLA'20
 
Blog post, Jun. 2020
A Software Testing View on Machine Learning Model Quality
 
Talk, Jun. 2020
Teaching Software Engineering for AI-Enabled Systems | ICSE SEET'20
 
Talk, Apr. 2020
Software Engineering for ML-Enabled Systems | Code & Supply
 
Blog post, Mar. 2020
Machine Learning is Requirements Engineering
 
Website, Jan. 2020
Software Engineering for AI/ML -- An Annotated Bibliography
 
Blog post, May. 2019
Feature Flags vs Configuration Options — Same Difference?
 
Infographic, Mar. 2018
Infographic: npm badges (w/ A. Trockman, B. Vasilescu)
 
Talk, May. 2017
How to Break an API: How Community Values Influence Practices | JSConf EU 2017
 
Website, May. 2017
How to break an API? (w/ C. Bogart)
 
Blog post, Mar. 2015
On Paper Titles (Bad Ideas, Rejected Ideas, and Final Titles)
 
Blog post, Jul. 2014
Teaching Software Construction with Travis CI
 
 
 

Selected Publications Full publication feed

For a complete list of publications, see the publication page.

 
2025
Christian Kästner. Machine Learning in Production: From Models to Products. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, April 2025. [ open access, publisher, bib ]
 
ACL 2026
Chenyang Yang, Yike Shi, Qianou Ma, Michael Xieyang Liu, Christian Kästner, and Tongshuang Wu. What Prompts Don't Say: Understanding and Managing Underspecification in LLM Prompts. In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics -- Findings (ACL), pages 9072--9101, July 2026. [ .pdf, arXiv, http, bib ]
 
MSR 2026
Hao He, Courtney Miller, Shyam Agarwal, Christian Kästner, and Bogdan Vasilescu. Speed at the Cost of Quality: How Cursor AI Increases Short-Term Velocity and Long-Term Complexity in Open-Source Projects. In Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR), New York, NY: ACM Press, April 2026. [ .pdf, arXiv, doi, bib ]
 
CHI 2026
Nadia Nahar, Chenyang Yang, Yanxin Chen, Wesley Hanwen Deng, Ken Holstein, Motahhare Eslami, and Christian Kästner. "I Don't Think RAI Applies to My Model" -- Engaging Non-champions with Sticky Stories for Responsible AI Work. In Proceedings of the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), Article No. 1373, pp. 1--23, New York, NY: ACM Press, April 2026. Best Paper Award. [ acm, arXiv, doi, bib ]
 
ICSE 2026
Hao He, Haoqin Yang, Philipp Burckhardt, Alexandros Kapravelos, Bogdan Vasilescu, and Christian Kästner. Six Million (Suspected) Fake Stars on GitHub: A Growing Spiral of Popularity Contests, Spams, and Malware. In Proceedings of the 48th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), April 2026. [ arXiv, bib ]
 
ICSE 2026
Courtney Miller, Hao He, Weigen Chen, Elizabeth Lin, Chenyang Yang, Bogdan Vasilescu, and Christian Kästner. Designing Abandabot: When Does Open Source Dependency Abandonment Matter? In Proceedings of the 48th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), April 2026. [ .pdf, bib ]
 
FSE 2025
Hao He, Bogdan Vasilescu, and Christian Kästner. Pinning Is Futile: You Need More Than Local Dependency Versioning to Defend Against Supply Chain Attacks. Proceedings of the ACM on Software Engineering (FSE), 2(FSE):266--289, June 2025. Distinguished Paper Award. [ .pdf, doi, http, bib ]
 
ICSE-SEIP 2025
Nadia Nahar, Christian Kästner, Jenna Butler, Chris Parnin, Thomas Zimmermann, and Christian Bird. Beyond the Comfort Zone: Emerging Solutions to Overcome Challenges in Integrating LLMs into Software Products. In Proceedings of the Proc. International Conference on Software Engineering -- Software Engineering in Practice Track (ICSE-SEIP), pages 516--527, April 2025. [ arXiv, doi, bib ]
 
ASE 2024
Chenyang Yang, Yining Hong, Grace Lewis, Tongshuang Wu, and Christian Kästner. What Is Wrong with My Model? Identifying Systematic Problems with Semantic Data Slicing. In Proceedings of the 39th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE), pages 306--318, Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society, November 2024. [ .pdf, doi, http, bib ]
 
ICSE 2025
Nadia Nahar, Haoran Zhang, Grace Lewis, Shurui Zhou, and Christian Kästner. The Product Beyond the Model -- An Empirical Study of Repositories of Open-Source ML Products. In Proceedings of the 47th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), pages 1540--1552, April 2025. [ .pdf, arXiv, doi, http, bib ]
 
ICSE 2025
Courtney Miller, Mahmoud Jahanshahi, Audris Mockus, Bogdan Vasilescu, and Christian Kästner. Understanding the Response to Open-Source Dependency Abandonment in the npm Ecosystem. In Proceedings of the 47th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), pages 2355--2367, April 2025. Distinguished Paper Award. [ .pdf, doi, http, bib ]
 
FAccT 2024
Nadia Nahar, Jenny Rowlett, Matthew Bray, Zahra Abba Omar, Xenophon Papademetris, Menon Alka, and Christian Kästner. Regulating Explainability in Machine Learning Applications -- Observations from a Policy Design Experiment. In Proceedings of the Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT), pages 2101--2112, June 2024. [ .pdf, doi, bib ]
 
EMNLP 2023
Chenyang Yang, Rishabh Rustogi, Rachel A Brower-Sinning, Grace Lewis, Christian Kästner, and Tongshuang Wu. Beyond Testers’ Biases: Guiding Model Testing with Knowledge Bases using LLMs. In Proceedings of the Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing -- Findings (EMNLP), pages 13504--13519, December 2023. [ .pdf, arXiv, doi, bib ]
 
ESEC/FSE 2023
Courtney Miller, Christian Kästner, and Bogdan Vasilescu. "We Feel Like We're Winging It:" A Study on Navigating Open-Source Dependency Abandonment. In Proceedings of the European Software Engineering Conference and ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE), pages 1281--1293, New York, NY: ACM Press, December 2023. [ .pdf, doi, bib ]
 
CAIN 2023
Nadia Nahar, Haoran Zhang, Grace Lewis, Shurui Zhou, and Christian Kästner. A Meta-Summary of Challenges in Building Products with ML Components – Collecting Experiences from 4758+ Practitioners. In Proceedings of the International Conference on AI Engineering - Software Engineering for AI (CAIN), pages 171--183, May 2023. [ .pdf, arXiv, doi, bib ]
 
CHI 2023
Avinash Bhat, Austin Coursey, Grace Hu, Sixian Li, Nadia Nahar, Shurui Zhou, Christian Kästner, and Jin L.C. Guo. Aspirations and Practice of ML Model Documentation: Moving the Needle with Nudging and Traceability. In Proceedings of the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), Article No.: 749, April 2023. [ .pdf, arXiv, doi, bib ]
 
ASE 2022
Chenyang Yang, Rachel A Brower-Sinning, Grace Lewis, and Christian Kästner. Data Leakage in Notebooks: Static Detection and Better Processes. In Proceedings of the 37th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE), Article No.: 30, New York, NY: ACM Press, October 2022. [ .pdf, arXiv, doi, bib ]
 
IEEE-Sw 2022
Christian Kästner, Eunsuk Kang, and Sven Apel. Feature Interactions on Steroids: On the Composition of ML Models. IEEE Software (IEEE-Sw), 39(3):120--124, May 2022. [ .pdf, doi, bib ]
 
ICSE 2022
Nadia Nahar, Shurui Zhou, Grace Lewis, and Christian Kästner. Collaboration Challenges in Building ML-Enabled Systems: Communication, Documentation, Engineering, and Process. In Proceedings of the 44th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), pages 413--425, New York, NY: ACM Press, May 2022. Distinguished Paper Award. [ .pdf, arXiv, doi, video, bib ]
 
ICSE 2022
Courtney Miller, Sophie Cohen, Daniel Klug, Bogdan Vasilescu, and Christian Kästner. "Did You Miss My Comment or What?" Understanding Toxicity in Open Source Discussions. In Proceedings of the 44th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), pages 710--722, New York, NY: ACM Press, May 2022. Distinguished Paper Award. [ .pdf, doi, video, bib ]
 
ICSE 2022
Miguel Velez, Pooyan Jamshidi, Norbert Siegmund, Sven Apel, and Christian Kästner. On Debugging the Performance of Configurable Software Systems: Developer Needs and Tailored Tool Support. In Proceedings of the 44th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), pages 1571--1583, New York, NY: ACM Press, May 2022. [ .pdf, arXiv, doi, video, bib ]
 
ASE 2021
Chenyang Yang, Shurui Zhou, Jin L.C. Guo, and Christian Kästner. Subtle Bugs Everywhere: Generating Documentation for Data Wrangling Code. In Proceedings of the 36th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE), pages 304--316, Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society, November 2021. [ .pdf, doi, bib ]
 
ESEC/FSE 2021
Chu-Pan Wong, Priscila Santiesteban, Christian Kästner, and Claire Le Goues. VarFix: Balancing Edit Expressiveness and Search Effectiveness in Automated Program Repair. In Proceedings of the European Software Engineering Conference and ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE), pages 354--366, New York, NY: ACM Press, August 2021. [ .pdf, doi, bib ]
 
TOSEM 2021
Christopher Bogart, Christian Kästner, James Herbsleb, and Ferdian Thung. When and how to make breaking changes: Policies and practices in 18 open source software ecosystems. ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM), 30(4):Article No.: 42, pp 1--56, October 2021. [ .pdf, http, bib ]
 
ICSE 2021
Miguel Velez, Pooyan Jamshidi, Norbert Siegmund, Sven Apel, and Christian Kästner. White-Box Analysis over Machine Learning: Modeling Performance of Configurable Systems. In Proceedings of the 43rd International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), pages 1072--1084, Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society, May 2021. [ .pdf, arXiv, doi, bib ]
 
ICSE 2021
Gabriel Ferreira, Limin Jia, Joshua Sunshine, and Christian Kästner. Containing Malicious Package Updates in npm with a Lightweight Permission System. In Proceedings of the 43rd International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), pages 1334--1346, Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society, May 2021. [ .pdf, doi, bib ]
 
ESEC/FSE 2020
Chu-Pan Wong, Jens Meinicke, Leo Chen, João P. Diniz, Christian Kästner, and Eduardo Figueiredo. Efficiently Finding Higher-Order Mutants. In Proceedings of the European Software Engineering Conference and ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE), pages 1165--1177, New York, NY: ACM Press, November 2020. [ .pdf, arXiv, doi, teaser, video, bib ]
 
ICSE-SEIP 2020
Jens Meinicke, Chu-Pan Wong, Bogdan Vasilescu, and Christian Kästner. Exploring Differences and Commonalities between Feature Flags and Configuration Options. In Proceedings of the Proc. International Conference on Software Engineering -- Software Engineering in Practice Track (ICSE-SEIP), pages 233--242, May 2020. [ .pdf, doi, video, bib ]
 
ICSE 2020
Cassandra Overney, Jens Meinicke, Christian Kästner, and Bogdan Vasilescu. How to Not Get Rich: An Empirical Study of Donations in Open Source. In Proceedings of the 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), pages 1209--1221, New York, NY: ACM Press, May 2020. [ .pdf, doi, video, bib ]
 
ICSE 2020
Shurui Zhou, Bogdan Vasilescu, and Christian Kästner. How Has Forking Changed in the Last 20 Years? A Study of Hard Forks on GitHub. In Proceedings of the 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), pages 445--456, New York, NY: ACM Press, May 2020. [ .pdf, doi, video, bib ]
 
ICSE-SEET 2020
Christian Kästner, and Eunsuk Kang. Teaching Software Engineering for AI-Enabled Systems. In Proceedings of the Proc. International Conference on Software Engineering -- Software Engineering Education and Training Track (ICSE-SEET), pages 45--48, New York, NY: ACM Press, May 2020. [ .pdf, arXiv, doi, video, bib ]
 
TOSEM 2018
Alexander von Rhein, Jörg Liebig, Andreas Janker, Christian Kästner, and Sven Apel. Variability-Aware Static Analysis at Scale: An Empirical Study. ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM), 27(4):Article No. 18, 2018. [ .pdf, doi, bib ]
 
OOPSLA 2018
Chu-Pan Wong, Jens Meinicke, Lukas Lazarek, and Christian Kästner. Faster Variational Execution with Transparent Bytecode Transformation. Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages, Issue OOPSLA (OOPSLA), 2:117:1--117:30, 2018. [ .pdf, doi, bib ]
 
ICSE 2018
Asher Trockman, Shurui Zhou, Christian Kästner, and Bogdan Vasilescu. Adding Sparkle to Social Coding: An Empirical Study of Repository Badges in the npm Ecosystem. In Proceedings of the 40th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), pages 511--522, New York, NY: ACM Press, May 2018. [ .pdf, doi, http, bib ]
 
ICSE 2018
Shurui Zhou, Ștefan Stănciulescu, Olaf Leßenich, Yingfei Xiong, Andrzej Wąsowski, and Christian Kästner. Identifying Features in Forks. In Proceedings of the 40th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), pages 105--116, New York, NY: ACM Press, May 2018. [ .pdf, doi, http, bib ]
 
TSE 2018
Max Lillack, Christian Kästner, and Eric Bodden. Tracking Load-time Configuration Options. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE), 44(12):1269--1291, 2018. [ .pdf, doi, bib ]
 
ASE 2017
Pooyan Jamshidi, Norbert Siegmund, Miguel Velez, Christian Kästner, Akshay Patel, and Yuvraj Agarwal. Transfer Learning for Performance Modeling of Configurable Systems: An Exploratory Analysis. In Proceedings of the 32nd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE), pages 497--508, Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society, November 2017. [ .pdf, arXiv, doi, bib ]
 
TSE 2018
Flávio Medeiros, Márcio Ribeiro, Rohit Gheyi, Sven Apel, Christian Kästner, Bruno Ferreira, Luiz Carvalho, and Baldoino Fonseca. Discipline Matters: Refactoring of Preprocessor Directives in the #ifdef Hell. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE), 44(5):453--469, May 2018. [ .pdf, doi, bib ]
 
ASE 2016
Jens Meinicke, Chu-Pan Wong, Christian Kästner, Thomas Thüm, and Gunter Saake. On Essential Configuration Complexity: Measuring Interactions In Highly-Configurable Systems. In Proceedings of the 31st IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE), pages 483--494, New York, NY: ACM Press, September 2016. [ .pdf, doi, bib ]
 
FSE 2016
Christopher Bogart, Christian Kästner, James Herbsleb, and Ferdian Thung. How to Break an API: Cost Negotiation and Community Values in Three Software Ecosystems. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE), pages 109--120, New York, NY: ACM Press, November 2016. [ .pdf, doi, http, bib ]
 
ICSE 2016
Flávio Medeiros, Christian Kästner, Márcio Ribeiro, Rohit Gheyi, and Sven Apel. A Comparison of 10 Sampling Algorithms for Configurable Systems. In Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), pages 643--654, New York, NY: ACM Press, May 2016. [ .pdf, doi, bib ]
 
ESEC/FSE 2015
Norbert Siegmund, Alexander Grebhahn, Christian Kästner, and Sven Apel. Performance-Influence Models for Highly Configurable Systems. In Proceedings of the European Software Engineering Conference and ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE), pages 284--294, New York, NY: ACM Press, August 2015. [ .pdf, bib ]
 
ESEC/FSE 2015
Hung Viet Nguyen, Christian Kästner, and Tien N. Nguyen. Cross-language Program Slicing for Dynamic Web Applications. In Proceedings of the European Software Engineering Conference and ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE), pages 369--380, New York, NY: ACM Press, August 2015. [ .pdf, bib ]
 
TSE 2015
Sarah Nadi, Thorsten Berger, Christian Kästner, and Krzysztof Czarnecki. Where do Configuration Constraints Stem From? An Extraction Approach and an Empirical Study. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE), 41(8):820--841, 2015. [ .pdf, doi, bib ]
 
ECOOP 2015
Flávio Medeiros, Christian Kästner, Márcio Ribeiro, Sarah Nadi, and Rohit Gheyi. The Love/Hate Relationship with The C Preprocessor: An Interview Study. In Proceedings of the 29th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP), volume 37 of Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics, pages 495--518, Dagstuhl, Germany: Schloss Dagstuhl--Leibniz-Zentrum fuer Informatik, 2015. [ .pdf, doi, bib ]
 
FSE 2014
Hung Viet Nguyen, Christian Kästner, and Tien N. Nguyen. Building Call Graphs for Embedded Client-Side Code in Dynamic Web Applications. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE), pages 518--529, New York, NY: ACM Press, November 2014. [ .pdf, doi, bib ]
 
Onward! 2014
Eric Walkingshaw, Christian Kästner, Martin Erwig, Sven Apel, and Eric Bodden. Variational Data Structures: Exploring Tradeoffs in Computing with Variability. In Proceedings of the 13rd SIGPLAN Symposium on New Ideas in Programming and Reflections on Software at SPLASH (Onward!), pages 213--226, New York, NY: ACM Press, 2014. [ .pdf, doi, bib ]
 
CSUR 2014
Thomas Thüm, Sven Apel, Christian Kästner, Ina Schaefer, and Gunter Saake. A Classification and Survey of Analysis Strategies for Software Product Lines. ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), 47(1):Article 6, June 2014. [ .pdf, doi, http, bib ]
 
ICSE 2014
Janet Siegmund, Christian Kästner, Sven Apel, Chris Parnin, Anja Bethmann, Thomas Leich, Gunter Saake, and André Brechmann. Understanding Understanding Source Code with Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging. In Proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), pages 378--389, June 2014. [ .pdf, doi, bib ]
 
ICSE 2014
Hung Viet Nguyen, Christian Kästner, and Tien N. Nguyen. Exploring Variability-Aware Execution for Testing Plugin-Based Web Applications. In Proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), pages 907--918, June 2014. [ .pdf, doi, bib ]
 
ICSE 2014
Sarah Nadi, Thorsten Berger, Christian Kästner, and Krzysztof Czarnecki. Mining Configuration Constraints: Static Analyses and Empirical Results. In Proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), pages 140--151, June 2014. [ .pdf, doi, bib ]
 
ICSE 2014
Márcio Ribeiro, Paulo Borba, and Christian Kästner. Feature Maintenance with Emergent Interfaces. In Proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), pages 989--1000, June 2014. [ .pdf, doi, bib ]
 
TSE 2014
Christian Kästner, Alexander Dreiling, and Klaus Ostermann. Variability Mining: Consistent Semiautomatic Detection of Product-Line Features. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE), 40(1):67--82, 2014. [ .pdf, doi, http, bib ]
 
2013
Sven Apel, Don Batory, Christian Kästner, and Gunter Saake. Feature-Oriented Software Product Lines: Concepts and Implementation. Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 2013. 308 pages, ISBN 978-3-642-37520-0. [ http, bib ]
 
OOPSLA 2012
Christian Kästner, Klaus Ostermann, and Sebastian Erdweg. A Variability-Aware Module System. In Proceedings of the 27th Annual ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA), pages 773--792, New York, NY: ACM Press, October 2012. [ .pdf, doi, bib ]
 
EMSE 2012
Janet Feigenspan, Christian Kästner, Sven Apel, Jörg Liebig, Michael Schulze, Raimund Dachselt, Maria Papendieck, Thomas Leich, and Gunter Saake. Do Background Colors Improve Program Comprehension in the #ifdef Hell? Empirical Software Engineering (EMSE), 18(4):699--745, 2012. [ .pdf, doi, http, bib ]
 
ICSE 2012
Norbert Siegmund, Sergiy S. Kolesnikov, Christian Kästner, Sven Apel, Don Batory, Marko Rosenmüller, and Gunter Saake. Predicting Performance via Automated Feature-Interaction Detection. In Proceedings of the 34th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), ISBN 978-1-4673-1067-3, pages 167--177, Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society, 2012. [ .pdf, bib ]
 
TSE 2013
Sven Apel, Christian Kästner, and Christian Lengauer. Language-Independent and Automated Software Composition: The FeatureHouse Experience. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE), 39(1):63--79, 2013. [ .pdf, http, bib ]
 
FOSD 2011
Christian Kästner, Sven Apel, and Klaus Ostermann. The Road to Feature Modularity? In Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Feature-Oriented Software Development (FOSD), ISBN 978-1-4503-0789-5, pages 5:1--5:8, New York, NY: ACM Press, September 2011. [ .pdf, doi, bib ]
 
OOPSLA 2011
Christian Kästner, Paolo G. Giarrusso, Tillmann Rendel, Sebastian Erdweg, Klaus Ostermann, and Thorsten Berger. Variability-Aware Parsing in the Presence of Lexical Macros and Conditional Compilation. In Proceedings of the 26th Annual ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA), ISBN 978-1-4503-0940-0, pages 805--824, New York, NY: ACM Press, October 2011. [ .pdf, doi, bib ]
 
ECOOP 2011
Klaus Ostermann, Paolo G. Giarrusso, Christian Kästner, and Tillmann Rendel. Revisiting Information Hiding: Reflections on Classical and Nonclassical Modularity. In Proceedings of the 25th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP), volume 6813 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pages 155--178, Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 2011. [ .pdf, doi, epub, bib ]
 
TOSEM 2012
Christian Kästner, Sven Apel, Thomas Thüm, and Gunter Saake. Type Checking Annotation-Based Product Lines. ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM), 21(3):Article 14, 2012. [ .pdf, doi, epub, bib ]
 
AOSD 2011
Jörg Liebig, Christian Kästner, and Sven Apel. Analyzing the Discipline of Preprocessor Annotations in 30 Million Lines of C Code. In Proceedings of the 10th ACM International Conference on Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD), pages 191--202, New York, NY: ACM Press, March 2011. [ .pdf, acm, bib ]
 
ICSE 2010
Jörg Liebig, Sven Apel, Christian Lengauer, Christian Kästner, and Michael Schulze. An Analysis of the Variability in Forty Preprocessor-Based Software Product Lines. In Proceedings of the 32nd International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), pages 105--114, New York, NY: ACM Press, May 2010. [ .pdf, acm, doi, bib ]
 
GPCE 2009
Christian Kästner, Sven Apel, and Martin Kuhlemann. A Model of Refactoring Physically and Virtually Separated Features. In Proceedings of the 8th ACM International Conference on Generative Programming and Component Engineering (GPCE), ISBN 978-1-60558-828-5, pages 157--166, New York, NY: ACM Press, October 2009. [ .pdf, acm, doi, bib ]
 
JOT 2009
Sven Apel, and Christian Kästner. An Overview of Feature-Oriented Software Development. Journal of Object Technology (JOT), 8(5):49--84, July/August 2009. Refereed Column. [ .pdf, http, bib ]
 
ICSE 2009
Thomas Thüm, Don Batory, and Christian Kästner. Reasoning about Edits to Feature Models. In Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), ISBN 978-1-4244-3452-7, pages 254--264, Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society, May 2009. [ .pdf, bib ]
 
ICSE 2008
Christian Kästner, Sven Apel, and Martin Kuhlemann. Granularity in Software Product Lines. In Proceedings of the 30th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), ISBN 978-1-60558-079-1, pages 311--320, New York, NY: ACM Press, May 2008. Most Influencial Paper Award at SPLC'19. [ .pdf, acm, doi, epub, bib ]
 
SPLC 2007
Christian Kästner, Sven Apel, and Don Batory. A Case Study Implementing Features Using AspectJ. In Proceedings of the 11st International Software Product Line Conference (SPLC), pages 223--232, Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society, September 2007. [ .pdf, bib ]
 
 

more...

Copyright Notice: This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.

 
 
 

FOSD Cool Wall

The cool wall was created and evolved during the yearly FOSD meetings (see fosd.net). With it, we encourage researchers to look for better tool names. Up to 2012, the listing was completely subjective, feel free to complain. Starting 2013, we started voting. In 2013 and 2014 we even gave out a Coolest Tool Name award. Unfortunately, the 2014 listing is incomplete, as the photos of the votes got lost.

Cool Wall 2016
 
 
 

Private Interests

Juggling, Cooking, Board games, Concerts