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Completed TRL 8 (started at 1, targeting 8)
To expedite the unit testing process for NASA's flight software by leveraging the existing tool, GCC suite, to perform Modified Condition/Decision Coverage (MC/DC) analysis. The main goal is for the software to work within the GCC suite and be able to produce explicit MC/DC analysis.
Many different NASA projects, including the Orion Multipurpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV), use the gcc compiler and the gcov profiling tool (https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Gcov.html) to provide coverage metrics for Unit Tests. NPR 7150.2 standards now require full MC/DC analysis and 100% coverage. The project focused on C/C++ as the target language.
This project successfully integrated MC/DC analysis into the GCC compiler. This project has made significant improvements in software testing efficiency and code analysis for safety-critical systems.
Adding MC/DC capability to gcov will benefit software development on many NASA programs and projects across all mission directorates.On the Orion Flight Software (FSW) program, the requirement to provide 100% MC/DC coverage entails that the contractor spend thousands of hours doing manual analysis of the Unit Tests to ensure they meet this criterion. The process of manual analysis is also prone to error. With MC/DC evaluation done by the gcov tool, we would save those thousands of hours in our current Artemis II development effort. Adding capabilities to an open source project has the added benefit of making those changes a (potentially) permanent part of that tool. Subsequently, any future changes and improvements to gcov would also be available to the NASA community. You can find the gcc git page here: https://gcc.gnu.org/git.html
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