Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) has been introduced for almost a decade as a suitable method for Feature Location (FL) on a collection of product variants. Even though FCA-based FL techniques allow to locate the core of a feature implementation, they do not propose a solution to trace feature interactions to their implementation. Thus, the extracted traceability links (traces) are too inaccurate, and, in the context of SPL extraction, cannot be used to generate complete products.

In this paper, we propose to complement FCA-based FL techniques. Our proposed technique is capable of extracting the feature implementation and the implementation of the feature interaction. This process leverages the power of Relational Concept Analysis, an extension of FCA to multi-relational data. Moreover, our technique can be applied to fine-grained artefacts, which permits it to have more accurate traces that better capture the features’ implementation and interactions.
Finally, we also propose a method to reduce the size of the traces (number of features) for a better comprehension of each trace. We have applied our FL technique to five case studies of product variants. The results show that our technique produces valid traces, from which we were able to completely rebuild the set of artefacts for each initial product. Our results also show that our trace reduction removes, on average, between 31% and 85% of unnecessary features from the traces.