[SystemSafety] MISRA C:2012 Launched

[Chris Hills]

I would not normally send a press release to this list but MISRA C is not a
product as such and I know a lot of you have an interest in the MISRA coding
standards.   I trust no one finds it a problem.  

More information at 
http://www.phaedsys.com/pressreleases/index.html
and
http://www.phaedsys.com/standards/misra/misra-c3.html

You can find more information on the Programming Research and LDRA web
sites.

PRESS RELEASE:- 

26th February 2013, Nuremberg, Germany and Tamworth, England. Chris Hills,
CTO of Phaedrus Systems, the specialists in tools for the development of
safety-critical and high reliability embedded systems, and a member of the
MISRA-C team for the last decade, has welcomed the announcement of MISRA
C:2012.

“These guidelines are the ideal basis for an organisation to develop coding
standards for the C programming language, as part of an integrated
development process,” said Hills. “While MISRA’s heritage is the automotive
industry, MISRA C is now the most widely accepted set of guidelines for C in
any industry.”

MISRA C:2012 extends the guidelines beyond C90 to include C99 and also has
clarified and simplified the rules of MISRA C:2004.

“The C language includes “legal but dubious constructs, ”, to quote Dennis
Ritchie the father of C. These can conspire to cause behaviour you don’t
want,” says Hills. “For any system, let alone safety-critical systems, this
is clearly undesirable, so one task of the guidelines is to ensure that such
constructs are not used.” 

The changes to the guidelines were as a result of considerable user
experience in a wide range of applications, and of the experience of tools
companies in measuring code conformance. “One result is that many of the
guidelines are decidable – that is an automated checker can say whether the
guideline has been followed. Applying the guidelines and using code analysis
tools greatly improves the quality of code and the productivity of
developers,” says Hills. “Integrating them within a tool chain, from
requirements specification through to unit testing and even tracking the
different variants in deployment, provides the best way of demonstrating
that a system will meet the demands of certification authorities for
safety-critical applications.”

The members of the MISRA C:2012 team come from a wide range of areas,
including aerospace, defence and Industrial control, reflecting the way that
the guidelines have moved from automotive to almost any safety-critical
application, including nuclear engineering. 

“MISRA C:2012 is for anyone developing systems, but it has to be used with
discernment. It is not a religion but it is the starting point for ensuring
that developed code is robust and predictable.”

Notes for Editors
Chris Hills is the founder and CTO of Phaedrus Systems. He has a long term
interest in C and has been involved with MISRA-C since 1998. He served on
the MISRA-C2 Working Group and then on its successor for MISRA C:2012. He
has been a member of the ISO/BSI C and C++ Language Panels since 1999. He
was the convener of the C panel from 2000 to 2004. He sits on the IEC
61508-3 Panel and sat on the now defunct Technical Advisory Panel of the
IET’s Microelectronics & Embedded Systems Network. 

Phaedrus Systems Limited is the UK’s leading specialist in the support of
engineers at all stages of embedded safety-critical and high-integrity
projects. The company is IAR’s distributer in the UK. Other tools available
include requirements capture for IEC 61508, EN 50128 and nuclear
applications; requirements tracking and competency tools; estimation
software; SIL3 RTOS; hi-rel embedded database; compiler validation reports
and reliability/failure software. Consultants have experience working on
automotive, rail and aerospace applications, meeting standards such as IEC
61508 SIL4, and D0178B. Backing these is a wide range of other relevant
embedded tools.

Phaedrus Systems is based in Tamworth, Staffordshire. More information is
available on the website www.phaedsys.com


Regards
   Chris 

 Eur Ing Chris Hills BSc CEng MIET MBCS FRGS FRSA Technical Specialist
Phaedrus Systems Ltd Tel:  FREEphone 0808 1800 358
Vat GB860621831  Co Reg #04120771
Http://www.phaedsys.com chills at phaedsys.com