Code Coverage Branch Monitor

CCBM is commonly used to support:

• SWI (Software Integration Testing): verifying interactions between software components, where branch and statement coverage evidence is required.
• HSI (Hardware/Software Integration Testing): ensuring correct execution on target hardware with traceable coverage evidence.

CCBM’s role is to provide structural coverage evidence (especially branch coverage), which is a key verification objective in industry standards for higher safety integrity levels. This evidence is often required for certification audits to demonstrate that test cases have exercised required control flow paths and that untested code is identified and justified.

CCBM performs a structured, tool-supported workflow to measure and analyze branch coverage in C applications:

1. Source Code Instrumentation CCBM instruments C source code at branch level by inserting execution markers that track whether specific paths are reached during runtime.

2. Build and Execution The instrumented code is compiled and executed on the target platform. During execution, coverage events are recorded as branches are taken.

3. Raw Coverage Collection Execution produces raw coverage data, reflecting which instrumented branches and statements have been exercised.

4. Coverage Merging CCBM aggregates and merges results from multiple test runs, enabling incremental coverage accumulation across test suites and environments. External formats such as gcov can optionally be integrated.

5. Source Code Mapping The collected coverage data is mapped back to the original C source code, enabling precise identification of both executed and missed lines or branches.

6. Reporting and Visualization CCBM generates structured reports and HTML summaries to support analysis, review, and certification evidence.