Programming context-aware features in ruby

Observing the evolution of hardware and software technologies over the years, the programming tendency smoothly switched from declarative and static approaches, where a given program should ensure the same input-output pairs regardless of its environment, to more dynamic and context-dependent behaviours such as in mobile platforms, where for example applications are able to adapt to the output of their sensors (accelerometer, GPS, proximity, ...). The purpose of this thesis is to provide an insight on several techniques and means that were developed over the years regarding Context-Oriented Programming and behavioural variations. It is illustrated via a self-adaptive framework architecture where features and contexts are treated separately, but are encouraged to collaborate. This context-aware framework implemented in Ruby with the newest features that the language can provide is taking the challenge of unifying features and contexts under the same self-adaptive system, where only an object-oriented application needs to be settled. Especially, this thesis is focusing on the integration of features dynamically in a running application, where Ruby's metaprogramming capabilities truly shine.