To comply with tool qualification requirements, you have to do three things: (1) classify the compiler; (2) validate it with a suitable test suite – such as, SuperTest – and, if necessary, mitigate the impact of detected errors; (3) document your inputs, findings, test results and mitigations..
Understanding of programming languages: To design a compiler, you must deeply understand programming languages, including syntax and semantics.
This requires knowledge of formal language theory, such as regular expressions, context-free grammar, and automata theory..
The ISO 26262 standard requires for ASIL-D the qualification of tools (see chapter 8.11) and a qualification of software components like C/C++ libraries of a compiler (see chapter 8.12).
The ISO 26262 standards defines a software tool (see definition I-1.124) e.g. compiler as computer program used in the development..
A compiler is a special program that translates a programming language's source code into machine code, bytecode or another programming language.
The source code is typically written in a high-level, human-readable language such as Java or C++..
For DO-178C, additional measures are required.) The benefit of a trusted compiler is that it significantly simplifies the test procedures for the application and makes them more efficient.
It is true that compiler qualification itself is not trivial, but it is a process that can be managed in-house without much overhead.
Compiler qualification, for example by testing against the compiler specification, is the process that is described by the Functional Safety standard to gain sufficient confidence in the correctness of the compiler.
Tool Qualification is the process that is described by a functional safety standard to develop sufficient confidence in using a tool.
Compilers are complex pieces of software (in the order of 2 to 5 million lines of code) that play a crucial role in the translation from source code to the machine code.
