Software Development & Testing for Civil Aviation

Parasoft helps organizations achieve compliance with DO-178B/C, which explicitly requires created source code to conform to the software code standards (DO-178C, 5.3.2.b). All organizations wishing to be compliant with DO-178C need to demonstrate code standards compliance.

To this end, Parasoft C/C++test helps teams achieve compliance with multiple coding standards and improve code quality. Parasoft C/C++test provides a set of built-in checkers (rules) for verifying compliance with standards like JSF, MISRA C 2023, MISRA C++ 2023, AUTOSAR C++14, and HIC++.

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Parasoft C/C++test helps organizations promote secure coding patterns and achieve compliance with security coding standards. C/C++test provides the most comprehensive set of built-in checkers (rules) on the market for verifying compliance with standards like CERT C, CERT C++, UL 2900, and CWE.

Parasoft C/C++test detects complex runtime-like problems early in the development stage by analyzing execution paths through the code and finding potential bugs. In addition to 2200+ rules and checkers, Parasoft makes it easy for teams to verify organization-specific coding guidelines, with a special editor for creating custom checkers to extend (or replace) the built-in rules provided with the tool. With Parasoft C/C++test, users don’t have to write any scripts, and organization-specific coding guidelines can be fully automated to replace the manual process of compliance verification.

DO-178C does not explicitly list unit testing as a required testing method. However, the standard requires that test coverage of low level requirements is achieved (DO-178C 6.4.4.b). In most cases, unit testing is the most practical way of achieving this objective.

C/C++test and C/C++test CT reduces the effort related to unit test cases creation and maintenance by reducing the amount of scripting required and providing convenient views and graphical editors to simplify the process.

The design of Parasoft C/C++test’s unit testing framework is created with safety-critical software testing in mind. Stubs and test cases with values for tested software’s stimulation can be created as a source code or with graphical editors with source code generation capabilities. Users can store and review created test artifacts together with the project’s files. The initialization of the variables and input parameters for tested software stimulation is done in exactly the same way as during production software operation, for a superior approach.

The design of Parasoft C/C++test CT is designed to integrate into open source unit testing frameworks like GoogleTest, CppUnit and any other.

C/C++test and C/C++test CT can be used to execute unit tests on the host platform, target processor simulator, or on the embedded target. This flexibility enables developers to run tests frequently inside their IDE and in the CI/CD pipeline, where simulators are typically used, as well as with real hardware, for DO-178C compliance purposes. Parasoft C/C++test’s test harness was optimized to take minimal additional overhead for the binary footprint and processor cycles. Dedicated integrations with embedded IDEs and debuggers make the process of executing unit test cases smooth and automated.

Unit testing becomes much easier and productive if it can be used together with a stubbing/mocking framework. Parasoft C/C++test’s powerful module for creating stubs and mocks can help in fault injection or robustness testing (DO-178C 6.4.2.2), reduce dependencies of the tested code, or to simply stub out not-yet-implemented source code.

DO-178C explicitly requires achieving test coverage of the software structure (DO-178C 6.4.4.c) to comply with the standard. Parasoft C/C++test and C/C++test CT supports all of the coverage metrics required by DO-178C (statement, branch, MC/DC), and more (path, simple condition, line, block, function, call). The tool presents code coverage results from all levels of testing including unit, integration, and system level testing.

Parasoft C/C++test and C/C++test CT reduces the time required to analyze coverage results and find the gaps in the testing process. Developers can review code coverage results inside IDE with dynamic views and filter the results depending on metric, function/method, or specific test case.

Parasoft’s Assembly Coverage Tool (ASMTool) satisfies the Executable Object Code recommendations set out by DO-178B/C Level A. With little effort, ASMTool can generate structural coverage reports from Executable Object Code. Structural Coverage is reported with easily reviewable insight into compiler generated code that is not directly traceable to Source Code statements. It also tracks switch statements, providing full insight into the test execution paths at the machine language instruction level.

ASMTool also supports collecting Structural Coverage from both the software integration process (target hardware testing), and desktop development environment (Parasoft C/C++test and C/C++test CT for Unit Testing).

Parasoft C/C++test and C/C++test CT’s requirements traceability reporting helps organizations achieve compliance with DO-178C, which explicitly lists requirements-based testing as an objective (DO-178C 6.4.4.1). Parasoft integrates with the team’s requirements management system to provide traceability reports that display the correlation between requirements and the
following:

● Source code created to implement these requirements.
● Test cases created to test the requirements.
● Results of executed tests and code coverage results.

Traceability reports provide clear and complete information about development progress, and teams can easily determine how many requirements were already implemented and how thoroughly they are tested.

DO-178C introduces 5 software levels (SLs) A to E. The software level for a system is determined during the safety assessment process, based on the failure condition that may result from the anomalous behavior of the software. Software level A represents the most stringent level with the most rigorous practices required in aerospace software development and testing.

To support tool qualification as described in DO-178C/DO-330, Parasoft C/C++test is supported with a dedicated Qualification Kit, which automates the tool qualification process, guiding users through all the steps required to conduct the qualification and produce necessary documentation. A dedicated Qualification Support Tool automates the majority of the tedious manual work required to qualify the tool, including executing the test cases from the exhaustive test suite provided and generating the final reports required to document the qualification process.  Parasoft C/C++test CT’s Qualification Kit is under development.