[SystemSafety] Candidates for the firing squad

[David Haworth]

On 2018-09-20 13:55:06 +0100, Olwen Morgan wrote:
>    ... WTF? ....

Several (many) years ago, a static analyser was a program that could
analyse your code, produce call trees, detect recursion and even
perform basic analysis (range checks, paths etc.) of what would happen
during execution (although doing this properly essentially means
solving the halting problem). These days there are even better
versions of these tools - still with limitations, but computers
are much faster and have more memory the standard can be higher.

Simple source code checkers (lint etc.) were called just that.
MISRA-C checkers would have fallen into this category, had they
existed.

These days, the name "static analysis" seems to have been misappropriated
to cover the whole gamut of source code verification tools.

The problem with that is, when the standard says:
   "Perform static analysis - highly recommended"
the under-skilled people who are charged with verifying that the
development process follows the standard put this in their
Excel sheet:
   "MISRA-C checker  [tick]"

Another WTF moment :-(

>    Now that my lithium is kicking in (seriously, I do have to take it),
>    the manic postings will subside.

Oh, I hope not ...

:-)

Dave


-- 
David Haworth   OS Kernel Developer              david.haworth at elektrobit.com
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