Maximizing the Efficiency of Automotive Software Development Environment Using Open Source Technologies

The automotive industry is undergoing dramatic changes nowadays. New functionalities, such as complex digital cockpit solutions, driver assistance algorithms and more, are all software based. The shortening of the development time while maintaining a high quality of software releases is an uneasy task. Many solutions in this regard exist in the industry. However, the cost prevents the wider developer community from participating on fair terms. In this paper, we argue that many open source technologies and frameworks can be utilized in addition to field proven automotive development software. This way the total cost of the development, and time needed for testing and error checking can be reduced. Specifically, we extend the basic development process by utilizing open source build automation tools and servers to decrease the build and unit test time, and incorporate code based analysis tools for static and dynamic analysis. These tools increase the software quality, and can be combined with commercial application life cycle management tools, which are already used in the automotive industry.

I. Introduction

Most automotive companies have their own proprietary systems and tools, which are inaccessible or unaffordable to most developers. Automotive software is becoming increasingly complex, as it must undergo meticulous unit and integration testing.