SHEDDING LIGHT ON EMBEDDED DEBUGGING

摘要

For each year of Embedded Systems Design's annual market survey of embedded-system developers, the single most requested area of improvement for design activities is debugging tools (Reference 1). The percentage of respondents making this request has remained steady at around 32% throughout the three years of the survey. In contrast, the percentage of respondents seeking improved programming tools has dropped from a high of 25% to 10%. Determining why the evolution of modern debugging tools is failing to hit the mark as well as software-programming tools do is worth exploring-especially when the surveys each year also confirm that the testing-and-debugging phase continues to be the one that consumes the largest amount-24%-of the project schedule. The third standout request for improvement in all three years' surveys is the project-management function of scheduling (see sidebar "COCOMO and evidence-based scheduling").