Requirements-based test suite for C standard library to be showcased at Embedded World 2022

The event will see the company’s CTO, Marcel Beemster, give a presentation entitled: ‘A requirements-based test suite for the C Standard Library: SuperGuard’, on 22 June at 4pm.  He will discuss the principles and practice of library qualification.

Launched last year, SuperGuard offers complete traceability from individual test results back to requirements derived from the ISO C language specification. It also offers high structural code and branch coverage out of the box. This ensures the safe use of the standard library in safety-critical applications such as automotive and rail.

This product maintains the documentation required to deliver information and transparency as specified by international certification authorities. It can be used to qualify both unmodified third-party C library implementations and self-developed or self-maintained implementations.

SuperGuard was developed by Solid Sands as a response to a lack of professional tools for library qualification for customers developing safety-critical applications.

It ideally complements Solid Sands’ SuperTest, a complete, acclaimed test and validation suite for C and C++ compilers and libraries which has tracked ISO language specifications for more than three decades.

Marcel Beemster explained: “A key characteristic of C is that it has a widely recognised ISO specification, which contains all the information needed but does not provide a list of requirements. We used the ISO specification to create a list of requirements and test specifications, matching those with our existing test suite.

“Finally, we created tools to drive the test suite and report results so they are fully traceable to the requirements and specifications.

“Functional safety standards clearly specify that qualification must be done for the application developer’s use-case – and SuperGuard makes this possible.”