Towards Refactoring FRETish Requirements

TL;DR

This paper explores refactoring techniques for formal requirements in NASA's FRET tool to improve maintainability and reduce repetition, inspired by industrial aircraft engine software development.

Contribution

It introduces initial ideas and approaches for refactoring FRETISH requirements to enhance their clarity and ease of modification.

Findings

Identified the need for refactoring in formal requirements.

Proposed initial refactoring strategies for FRETISH.

Reflected on real industrial use case to guide improvements.

Abstract

Like software, requirements evolve and change frequently during the development process. Refactoring is the process of reorganising software without changing its behaviour, to make it easier to understand and modify. We propose refactoring for formalised requirements to reduce repetition in the requirement set so that they are easier to maintain as the system and requirements evolve. This work-in-progress paper describes our motivation for and initial approach to refactoring requirements in NASA's Formal Requirements Elicitation Tool (FRET). This work was directly triggered by our experience with an industrial aircraft engine software controller use case. In this paper, we reflect on the requirements that were obtained and, with a view to their maintainability, propose and outline functionality for refactoring FRETISH requirements.