The recent launch of the RapiCover DO-178B/C tool qualification pack is a good opportunity to set out some of the guiding principles behind its development and to illustrate the questions we asked ourselves to ensure we gave our customers the best possible solution to their needs.

Users of RapiTime will probably be aware that one of the categories of information shown in a RapiTime report is "Ipoint Coverage". So, given that RapiTime supplies coverage information, why do you need RapiCover?

If you are developing software to Level A for DO-178B/C, your code has to undergo extremely rigorous structural coverage analysis for the purposes of certification. This includes examining both source and object code.

One question that we are frequently asked is what instrumentation overhead RapiCover introduces. Achieving low overhead instrumentation is recognized by our customers as a key strength of RapiCover. To measure structural code coverage of embedded software, or for that matter any software, code coverage tools like RapiCover use instrumentation (additional code that records what code has been executed).

Follow our progress on collecting coverage results without applying any instrumentation at all.