Integrating the Formal Methods part of Qualification

[Chris Johns]

On 28/6/2022 11:09 pm, Andrew.Butterfield at scss.tcd.ie wrote:
> Dear RTEMS Developers,
> 
> While the validation tests from the RTEMS pre-qualification activity are
> now merged into the RTEMS master, the work done in investigating and 
> deploying formal methods techniques is not yet merged.
> 
> The activity had two main phases: a planning phase (Nov 2018-Oct 2019) 
> that explored various formal techniques, followed by an execution phase 
> (Oct 2019-Nov 2021) that then applied selected techniques to selected 
> parts of RTEMS. Some discussions occurred with the RTEMS community 
> via the mailings lists over this time. A short third phase (Nov 2021 - Dec 2021) 
> then reported on the outcomes. Each phase resulted in a technical report.
> 
> The key decision made was to use Promela/SPIN for test generation, and 
> to apply it to the Chains API, the Event Manager, and the SMP scheduler
> thread queues. This involved developing models in the Promela language 
> and using the SPIN model-checker tool to both check their correctness
> and to generate execution scenarios that could be used to generate tests.
> Tools were developed using Python 3.8 to support this. Initial documentation 
> about tools and how to use them was put into the 2nd phase report.

Congratulations for the work and results you and others have managed to achieve.
It is exciting to see this happening with RTEMS and being made public.

> We now come to the part where we explore the best way to integrate this
> into RTEMS. I am proposing to do this under the guidance of Sebastian Huber.
> 
> The first suggested step is adding in new documentation to the RTEMS 
> Software Engineering manual, as a new Formal Methods chapter. This would 
> provide some motivation, as well as a "howto".
> 
> I assume that I would initially describe the proposed changes using the patch 
> review process described in the section on Preparing and Sending Patches in 
> the User Manual.
> 
> How do you feel I should best proceed?

It is hard for me to answer until I understand what is being submitted and who
maintains it? I am sure you understand this due to the specialised nature of the
work.

What will be submitted, ie SPIN files, scripts, etc?

Where are you looking to add these pieces?

How is the verification run against the code? Do we manage regression testing
and is that even possible?

I hope my simple questions highlight a lack of understand on how this works and
how we maintain it and use it once integrated.

Thanks
Chris