SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT WITH INTEGRATED CODE ROCKET CAPABILITIES

摘要

The development of software for embedded systems, such as spacecraft instruments, data processing orother on-board applications, faces a number of challenges not always fully met by many of the currentlyavailable software development environments.In this paper we describe a new suite of software tools, the STAR Software Development Environment(SSDE), which integrates Code Rocket code visualisation capabilities and provides low-level debuggingvisualisation tools to help the software engineer with embedded software design and debugging.In addition to the typical problems of software development encountered in all application areas, the verynature of spacecraft systems provides a number of further challenges. These include limited or complexcommunication with the target hardware, restricted debugging facilities, difficulty interpreting cache and tracebuffer contents, and the time it takes for the software engineer to orient themselves when debugging an areaof code written a while ago or by someone else. All of these factors can have adverse effects both on thequality of software, and on the time taken to develop it, and therefore on overall project timescales and costs.The STAR Software Development Environment (SSDE) provides a number of features which are intended todirectly address the problems associated with this type of development. A layered and modular approach