Re: [avr-chat] boundschecking & instrumentation

[Eric Weddington]

[ Please reply to the list as well ]

Steve Franks wrote:
> > writes data to a log file. All of this assumes an execution environment
> > that has a filesystem, file I/O, etc. This does not really apply to the AVR.
>
>
> True, but one could use an SD card or similar.

Have you seen how much code it takes to implement a driver for it? You 
would have to go through debugging the driver just to use it to debug 
the rest of your system. It would be overkill.

> > If you are interested in some interesting tools that are designed for
> > the AVR then I suggest that you look into Avrora:
> > <http://compilers.cs.ucla.edu/avrora/>
> > Among basic simulation it also has: profiling utilities, instrumentation
> > capabilities, control flow graph tool, and a stack checker. Note,
> > however, that I have not tried Avrora so I cannot comment on its efficacy.
>
>
> That I will check out.

Avrora would be much better because of the static checking that it can 
do. Rather than implement the SD card interface.

> > Could you be a bit more specific with what you would like to see?
>
> Well, medical, automotive, and aeronautical systems usually require a
> higher standard of testing.  Often it's done with the .elf file on a
> simulator, but given a filesystem, it can be done on the target.  As
> far as boundschecking, I find most bugs in embedded systems are
> pointer/array bounds accidents.  Instrumented code could give line
> numbers over the uart when detecting bounds overflows.

- If you're talking about simple instrumented code with a UART 
interface, then that is easier than implmenting the full SD Card 
interface. And it would probably be faster than trying to use these 
other projects.

- If you're interested in getting medical, automotive, or aerospace 
systems tested to comply with their individual standards, then I would 
recommend looking into a company called Validate Software:
<http://www.validatedsoftware.com/>
"Validated Software Corporation provides a complete range of Software 
Testing Services to meet all of your needs for Verification and 
Validation of Safety Critical Systems."

--
Eric Weddington