Featuredepends

Featuredepends is a concept used in software product lines and feature modeling to capture dependencies between features. It specifies that selecting a particular feature may require the presence of other features in the same product configuration. It is commonly represented as a directed relation or constraint: for a given feature f, the set of features that f depends on are those that must also be selected if f is chosen.

Formalization commonly describes featuredepends with a set of features F and a dependency relation D, where D is a mapping from a feature to a set of required features. Concretely, if f depends on g, and f is included in a configuration, then g must also be included. Some models allow conditional dependencies that apply only under certain other feature selections or contextual options. Dependencies can be mandatory, optional, or conditional, and they interact with other constraint types such as excludes or mutual exclusions in a feature model.

Usage and tooling: Featuredepends constraints help ensure build integrity, guide product derivation, and drive configuration tooling and automated testing. Constraint solvers, including SAT and CSP-based approaches, are commonly used to verify the consistency of configurations and to generate valid product variants that satisfy all dependencies.

Examples: A ReportingModule may depend on DatabaseConnector and AnalyticsAPI, meaning those features must be present when ReportingModule is selected. A CloudSync feature might depend on NetworkAccess and UserCredentials. These examples illustrate how dependencies shape feasible product configurations rather than representing standalone capabilities.

Relation to other concepts: Featuredepends is closely related to feature models, dependency graphs, and constrained product line engineering, and it is used alongside other relationships such as requires, excludes, and mutual exclusions to define valid configurations.

See also: feature model, feature toggle, product line engineering, constraint satisfaction problem.