Announcement: Unit test framework for Embedded C Software Applications

[David Kramer]

Agile Rules is pleased to announce C Automated Testing System (CATS)
and its associated test runner (Catsrunner). This unit testing
framework provides developers of C-based systems, including embedded
systems, the capability to use the popular Test Driven Development
(TDD) software development approach.

TDD is gaining widespread appeal because it has a proven track
record of simultaneously reducing time to market and significantly
increasing software quality. Unfortunately, until now, availability
of TDD tools had only benefited those developers who use languages
that provide object oriented support and reflection, such as C# and
Java. This has left a significant developer base, including a
majority of embedded developers, on the outside looking in.

CATS supports embedded cross-platform development by working in
conjunction with hardware abstraction layers. Illustrations of this are
included with the download. CATS also comes with a thin wrapper around
arm-elf-gdb's host/target communication functions. A reference
implementation for the ARM-7 CPU core is provided. CATS and Catsrunner
support the agile embedded techniques described in the paper "Taming the
Embedded Tiger: Agile Test Techniques for Embedded Software" (get it
here-  http://www.agilerules.com/publications.phtml ), which was
presented by Agile Rules at the Agile Development Conference in 2004.

CATS and Catsrunner are available as an Open Source tool for Unix and
Linux environments.

To download CATS, go to
http://www.agilerules.com/projects/catsrunner/index.phtml
The link to the download is near the bottom of the page. Happy
developing!

Your friends at Agile Rules: http://www.agilerules.com

For information on how to acquire TDD technological capability, contact
us at info at agilerules.com