Assisted Coverage Closure

TL;DR

This paper presents a verification workflow and tool integration that aids engineers in achieving full code coverage in safety-critical automotive systems through targeted testing and coverage analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a novel tool-supported workflow combining RapiCover and FShell to help close coverage gaps in requirements-driven testing for safety-critical software.

Findings

Successful application in an automotive case study

Effective identification of unreachable code sections

Enhanced debugging and test case generation capabilities

Abstract

The malfunction of safety-critical systems may cause damage to people and the environment. Software within those systems is rigorously designed and verified according to domain specific guidance, such as ISO26262 for automotive safety. This paper describes academic and industrial co-operation in tool development to support one of the most stringent of the requirements --- achieving full code coverage in requirements-driven testing. We present a verification workflow supported by a tool that integrates the coverage measurement tool RapiCover with the test-vector generator FShell. The tool assists closing the coverage gap by providing the engineer with test vectors that help in debugging coverage-related code quality issues and creating new test cases, as well as justifying the presence of unreachable parts of the code in order to finally achieve full effective coverage according to the required criteria. To illustrate the practical utility of the tool, we report about an application of the tool to a case study from automotive industry.