Product category:
Design and Development Software
News Release from: Coverity | Subject: Coverity Extend
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 12 March 2007
Upgrade for source code analysis
Software offers developers an alternative to manual code review processes, which can only address portions of a large code base.
The latest version of Coverity Extend comprises a suite of tools that enables embedded, ISV and enterprise developers to easily create customised source code checkers that work with Coverity Prevent, the company's flagship analysis product The new version now has full access to C/C++ types and comes with a new library of examples as well as extensive documentation
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 19 Apr 2007 at 8.00am (UK)
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Symbian is the world-leading open operating system that powers more than 70 million mobile phones from the world's leading handset manufacturers.
Symbian needed tools to help manage a multi-country development staff of more than 500 engineers to ensure the quality of all lines of code for the Symbian OS.
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The company needed the flexibility of Extend to analyse their highly customisable software that required a different configuration for each mobile phone platform.
In addition, Symbian developers needed the ability to continually extend the scope of the analysis to find specialised bugs that were unique to each phone platform.
"We picked Coverity specifically because of Extend, which lets us write our own custom checkers to work against the unique Symbian code base", said Neil Taylor, Technology Architect at Symbian.
"We had an exhaustive list of requirements for introduction of a static code analysis tool and we looked at a number of products".
"Only Coverity could handle our requirements and the complexity of our 5 million lines of code base".
After implementing Coverity Extend, any of Symbian's engineers could create custom checkers to analyse any configuration of the mobile OS.
Each custom checker was made accessible to all the engineers in the group, enabling a sophisticated customised checking library to be built up rapidly.
The engineering group estimates that each defect Coverity found saved three engineering days of troubleshooting effort.
Furthermore, each custom defect checker can then be used by all members of a development team.
"When used strategically, Extend can be a powerful accelerator to the quality assurance process", said Ben Chelf, CTO at Coverity.
"Custom checkers built with Extend use the vast pool of knowledge in the development group, resulting in checkers that precisely understand the nuances of the code".
"Development managers can leverage their entire development team to improve the quality assurance process, enforce coding policies, and build a unique base of reusable intellectual property that can be used to analyse all paths in their software with project-specific checks".
Coverity Extend offers developers an alternative to manual code review processes, which can only address portions of a large code base.
Through the strategic use of automation and customised checks, development groups can regularly perform a complete review of the entire code and establish processes for enforcing programming conventions.
Software development groups can create and enforce policies and processes for building quality into software or create compliance packages for internal coding policies and industry coding standards.
Customised code audit processes can be automated.
Organisations can also create customised security checks to guard against unauthorised access to sensitive data and other malicious exploits.
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