Using Catch to Write BDD-Style Unit Tests for C

January 11, 2016

Catch is a unit testing framework that has some interesting (better!) ways to write tests for C and C++.

Instead of naming your tests with function calls, you can write your tests as a nested series of Given-When-Then statements.

CMock vs FFF - A Comparison of C Mocking Frameworks

December 28, 2015

Did you know you have options when it comes to creating mocks for your C-language unit tests?

I've been spending a lot of time working with CMock -- since it's used by Ceedling -- but I've just been checking out FFF (the "fake function framework"). It's well done and I think it deserves a closer look.

Mocking Embedded Hardware Interfaces with Ceedling and CMock

November 5, 2015

How can you unit test your embedded software? What about your hardware dependencies?

The secret is mocking.

We can mock the interfaces to our hardware so that we don't need the actual hardware to test.

Slicing Embedded Software for Continuous Delivery

September 15, 2015

The first principle behind the Agile Manifesto is:

Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.

It's the highest priority! This has got to be really important, but why? What good is delivering software that can't do everything the customer wants? Well...

Why I Like to Write the Tests First

August 5, 2015

If you're on board with unit testing, but not quite sure about test-driven development, I want to share my experience for why I think writing the tests first is the way to go.

A Test-Driven Development Environment for the Tiva C Series Launchpad

July 29, 2015

For embedded test-driven development in C, you need to use a unit test framework to make testing easier. This can take some work to set up. I've created a reproducible environment with Vagrant that you can start using in just a few simple steps.

Portable, Reproducible Embedded Build Environments with Vagrant

June 5, 2015

All of your source code is in your version control system, but what about your build environment?

If your development machine crashed, would you be able to recreate your build environment?

Why Isn't Unit Testing Used in Embedded Software?

May 27, 2015

Unit testing is not widely used in embedded software, but it should be. In my experience the best way to learn is to start writing some unit tests right now.

Try Embedded Test-Driven Development Right Now with Ceedling

May 7, 2015

Maybe you've heard of Test-Driven Development (TDD), and maybe you've even thought it seemed like a reasonable idea. If you haven't tried TDD yet though, you really should. Here's some help to get you started right now.

Escape Your Embedded Vendor's IDE

April 17, 2015

Every embedded processor vendor now has it's own IDE (e.g. MPLAB, Code Composer Studio, etc.) available to embedded software developers, but you shouldn't use it to compile and build your project. Here's why.

Using GCC for Automatic C-Language Dependency Management with Rake

February 4, 2015

When using a build system for building embedded C applications, we want to be able to automatically track our source file dependencies. This allows us do incremental builds, where each time we build we only build what is necessary based on what has changed. This saves us time...

Using Rake to Build a Simple C Application

January 13, 2015

In this example we'll set up a simple build system for a C application to be complied with gcc. Using a similar method, we could use a cross-compliler (gcc or otherwise) to compile for whatever embedded target we would like.

Rake: An Alternative to Make for Embedded C Applications

January 9, 2015

Make has been traditionally been used for building embedded applications written in C. However Make has its issues. For example, it suffers from heavy reliance upon the host environment, arcane syntax and mysterious bugs due to whitespace issues.