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Clinch.md

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The model driven approach

the plan

I happened to work for a project of the Clinch* company that had (maybe still has) the following plan:

  • develop software for a digital interlocking (DSTW) from the scratch
  • development should be model based
  • use the IMB* toolchain including the Raggedy* modeling tool

SIL4

A DSTW software has to meet the standards of SIL4 / EN 50 129.

Security Integrity Level 4 requires following some rules, e.g.:

Before code can be checked in into a main branch it has to

  • be peer reviewed.
  • be (module) tested successfully with a 100% code coverage
  • follow special coding guidelines (static code analysis, SCA)

Any check in / merge must be blocked before continuous integration has been passed successfully:

  • build
  • tests
  • coverage
  • SCA

IMB toolchain

The IMB toolchain consists of 4 (four) so called managements that hardly collaborate with each other.

What the tools don’t provide is:

  • a working source control
  • a working review facility
  • a continuous integration
  • an understandable documentation
  • a community

What they provide is:

  • the permanent need of workarounds and repetitive click surface work down
  • a great collection of pitfalls and error driven frustration
  • permanent dysfunction
  • a high demand on support by doubtful specialists
  • repetitive "hm, last time it worked" in so called trainings
  • crappy C-code in bits and pieces
  • 90 % of the effort spent for the tools and not for work to be done

In other words: there is no way to reach SIL4 using the IMB toolchain.

the result

If a company’s philosophy is never to report any problems, it ends up exactly like Clinch:

  • increasing demand of human resources without any improvement / acceleration of work done
  • increasing frustration of the ones that need to get the work done
  • a complete illusory estimation of progress by the management

*) names changed