An agile quality assurance framework for the development of fusion real-time applications

In the context of a fast controller prototype project, which aimed at testing the integration of fast plant systems in the ITER software environment, a software Quality Assurance (QA) strategy that is appropriate for the development of ITER real-time applications (e.g. diagnostic control systems) is being developed. In particular the QA processes had to be designed in order to safely integrate contributions from a large and heterogeneous development community, which includes developer profiles both from the scientific community and from the industrial suppliers. Notably the coding standard aims at demonstrating MISRA-C++:2008 compliance. The MARTe software framework is currently being used to implement a large variety of fusion real-time control system applications. Being a modular and multi-platform framework has allowed to reuse components, interfaces and services across systems which are deployed in very distinct architectures. This has leveraged the exposure of the same code to different environment configurations, thus increasing the confidence on its quality and robustness. The QA processes are being applied to the development of a new version of the MARTe framework. The main objective is to provide a QA certifiable environment from where it is possible to develop, with less effort, certifiable applications. This is expected to be achieved by sharing the same QA methodologies and tools and by maximising the reuse of framework modules (which were also developed against these QA processes). This paper details the QA processes, the associated tools and discusses its applicability to the fusion development environment.