Mocking the Embedded World: Test-Driven Development, Continuous Integration, and Design Patterns

Abstract

Despite a prevalent industry perception to the contrary, the agile practices of Test-Driven Development and Continuous Integration can be successfully applied to embedded software. We present here a holistic set of practices, platform independent tools, and a new pattern (Model Conductor Hardware - MCH) that together produce: good from tests programmed first, logic decoupled from hardware, and systems testable under automation. Ultimately, this approach yields an order of magnitude or more reduction in software flaws, predictable progress, and measurable velocity for data-driven project management. We use the approach discussed herein for real-world production systems and have included a full C-based sample project (using an Atmel AT91SAM7X ARM7) to illustrate it. This example demonstrates transforming requirements into test code, system, integration, and unit tests driving development, daily micro design fleshing out a system's architecture, the use of the MCH itself, and the use of mock functions in tests.