After successful completion of the course, students are able to...

Technical and Methodological Knowledge

• support configuration management during software engineering,
• describe systematic approaches for configuration management,
• classify exemplary configuration management tools.

Cognitive and Practical Skills

• use configuration specification languages,
• construct programs implementing such specified variability,
• apply techniques of quality assurance in configurable applications.

Social and Personal Skills

• communicate variability with system administrators.

Configuration management is a cross-cutting concern which is important during the whole life cycle of software. In the course we discuss:

1. configuration settings: architecture of configuration access
2. configuration specification languages
3. configuration integration
4. configuration sources: configuration file formats, command-line arguments, environment variables
5. configuration management tools
6. strategies for validation and modularization
7. strategies for reduction of misconfiguration
8. early detection of misconfiguration
9. configuration as user interface
10. design of configuration

The VU will be held hybrid but with complete distance learning as option:

• a synchronous, regular, hybrid (if possible in a lecture room and online in any case) meeting with: short keynotes, recapitulations, discussions, votings, station learning, group work etc.
• asynchronous lecture videos and reading texts
• homework
• teamwork
• one project
• presentation
• reviews of pull-requests and written reports
• TUWEL as fixed channel of communication

We will meet on Wednesdays 14h c.t.-16h online at https://bbb.libelektra.org/b/mar-mfi-56f-mty. The preliminary talk will be in the first meeting on Wednesday 8.3.2022 at 14h c.t.

ECTS-Breakdown

• 2h preliminary talk
• 15h teamwork
• 15h homework
• 19h for preparing and visiting lectures
• 24h project, report and presentation

= 75 hours working time (3 ECTS)

The grade is calculated by the individual assessments with the following balance:

30%: homework

30%: teamwork

40%: project with report

A positive grade requires a given presentation and the positive assessment of all parts. Following grades will be issued genügend (4) for more than 50%, befriedigend (3) for more than 62,5%, gut (2) for more than 75% and sehr gut (1) for more than 87,5% of the reached points in the assessments.

If the registration does not work, please write an email with your student number to markus.raab@complang.tuwien.ac.at.

Will be published in TUWEL.

From previous term: slides and book (for further reading).

Before participating in the course students must be able to...

Technical and Methodological Knowledge

• describe typical sources of errors in non-configurable programs.

Cognitive and Practical Skills

• translate informal program descriptions given in natural language into executable programs written in one of the following languages: Java, C, C++, Python, Go, Lua, Rust, Kotlin or Ruby,
• use interfaces between applications and operating systems.

Social and Personal Skills

• participate in Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) communities,
• present technical content.

 Required preceding courses: none