Embedded Systems Engineering Standards Column vol 12.7 October 2004 A New Standard and China (again) By Chris Hills

 

I have to give the usual disclaimer that that these are my own personal views and not those of the ESE Editor and publisher. or those of my employer at the time..... I now work for Phaedrus Systems Ltd!

 

By the time you read this MISRA-C:2004 will have been launched at ESS at the NEC. Also launched is the official web site www.MISRA-C.com complete with web forum so you can ask questions. It also has information on the annual MISRA forum later in the month.

 

The other good news is that many compiler writers are now converting their header files to MISRA-C compliant. I remember having the discussion some years ago in the MISRA-C Working Group meeting as to weather we should insist all source code in a project including that supplied by third parties and compiler headers should be required to be compliant. We decided it should because if you let out the compiler headers just because it might be awkward to do it meant all the rules that were awkward could be over looked. We hoped that, as has happened, eventually everyone would start to produce MISRA-C code in compilers and source libraries etc. Note we don't expect the compiled compiler libraries to be in MISRA-C as these are usually hand optimised assembler and C mix. Also parts of the standard library are prohibited under MISRA-C anyway.

 

A coding guide however, as MISRA-C says in the introduction, is not a guarantee of good code in itself. Just as many foods can only help you slim as part of a calorie controlled diet a coding guide really only helps as part of a proper software engineering process. However is should help remove some of the more dubious aspects of C.

 

Recently I have noticed a sea change in the way SW is developed. About 5 years ago I presented a paper on embedded programming at ESS and maybe and asked the audience if they used version control. 1 in 20 said they did. I asked the same question in two seminars this month. The result was, in both cases, about 5 out of 8 were using VCS. Also the number using static analysis, from the humble Lint upwards, has been growing at the same rate. This is good. If MISRA-C is added to the mix it appears that the majority of programmers are using a reasonable SW process, coding guides and static analysis. This should result in better software with fewer bugs, hopefully in a fast time. The backlash to MISRA-C has also been interesting. (see www.phaedsys.org) Also for why C99 will be the C standard that never was.

 

I have two items on outsourcing and the Far East…. Apparently one Indian IT Company has outsourced its call centre to the UK! The other item underlines the concerns I expressed in the column "Slow boat to China" on manufacturing in China and the Far East. It appears, according to the Intersection Magazine I got with the Observer (Sunday 19 Sept) that foreign automobile companies manufacturing in China have to give the Chinese factory access to the design information. You should be able to hear the alarm bells ringing… GM decided to build the Chevrolet Spark in China for the Chinese market but they were none too please when a local Chinese company started to turn out the "similar" Chery QQ at a far lower price. GM were unimpressed to the point where they went to court. The Chinese courts are not sympathetic to foreign companies so the Chery QQ is still produced..

 

It is going to get worse for GM not only is the "similar" car outselling theirs in China it looks like the Chinese car is likely to compete in Europe soon… If it can happen to a car (and a legal team the size of GM's) it can happen to anything. I was going to use a different word to "similar" but was advised against it. Remember its not just the mechanics but the electronics as well.

 

Author Details and contact

 

Eur Ing Chris Hills BSc CEng MIET MBCS MIEEE  FRGS   FRSA is a Technical Specialist and can be reached at This Contact

 

Copyright Chris A Hills  2003 -2008
The right of Chris A Hills to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988