Formalization of coding conventions for safety-critical systems

Abstract

Coding conventions impose restrictions on source code, and can be established for many reasons, ranging from improving the readability of code to avoiding the introduction of security and safety flaws. Like many other artifacts in a software development process, coding conventions mostly come in the form of textual documents written in natural language, possibly with code examples. It has been argued that in their current form they offer limited benefit, due to the difficulty of actually being managed and enforced. The objective of the associated FAPESP Master Project is to propose an approach for the formalization of coding conventions using model-driven engineering techniques. A first version of the methodology has been defined and evaluated, and submitted to an international conference [1]. The objective of this BEPE project is to apply the proposed methodology in the safety-critical systems domains, and improve it based on the obtained results. To achieve this objective, we will work in collaboration with the RCL group of the University of Florence, Italy, which is specialized in the design and evaluation of safety-critical systems, and which has strong industrial connections in the field. (AU)