Non-intrusive Code Coverage

In his recent Embedded Computing Design article, Ben Brosgol discusses “Non-intrusive code coverage for safety-critical software” and more specifically how a “tool that derives precise source-level coverage metrics from execution trace data for a non-instrumented program” can really help with DO-178B evidence requirements. Abstract below with a link to the the full article…

Certification standards such as DO-178B for avionics require evidence that the system source code is completely exercised by tests derived from requirements. Traditional tools obtain the coverage data for a test run through code instrumentation, but this complicates analysis since the code being exercised is not the code that will finally execute. A solution to this problem is provided by a combination of two new tools, one for target emulation and one for coverage analysis. GNATemulator translates target object code into native host instructions, with the resulting code running on the host. This approach is efficient (target code is not being interpreted dynamically) and convenient (a significant amount of development can be conducted without an actual target board). Running on an instrumented version of GNATemulator, the GNATcoverage tool non-intrusively provides coverage data at both the source and object levels. At the object code level the tool performs instruction and branch coverage. At the source code level it provides statement coverage, decision coverage, and Modified Condition/Decision Coverage (MC/DC), performing the necessary analysis when MC/DC cannot be deduced from object branch coverage, and fully supports all levels of DO-178B safety certification.

http://embedded-computing.com/non-intrusive-code-coverage-safety-critical-software

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  1. [...] Non-intrusive Code Coverage In his recent Embedded Computing Design article, Ben Brosgol discusses “Non-intrusive code coverage for safety-critical software” and more specifically how a “tool that derives precise source-level coverage metrics from execution trace data for a… Source: http://www.open-do.org [...]

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