During the 2023 ACT Automotive Electronics and Software Technology Week, we talked with Li Pei, senior consultant and head of the technical support department of Longzhi. He focused on combining industry trends, his own experience and past successful cases, and shared the application of version control and static code scanning in automobiles. Application and practice in industry. In addition, a variety of tools including Git, SVN, etc. are compared and analyzed to provide help and reference for everyone.
A conversation with Li Pei, the technical leader of Longzhi and "Technical Hero", to explore the best practices of version control and static analysis in the automotive industry
Interview transcript
Q: What do you think of development management in the automotive industry? What kind of help can Longzhi provide you in this field?
Over the years, the automobile industry has remained a traditional manufacturing industry. But now, many car companies are facing competition from new energy companies and are in urgent need of transformation to reduce costs. They need to adopt new design methods and explore new models in this ancient industry.
There is one area where we can help. Now, because the hardware foundation is not much different, innovation in the automotive industry is concentrated on software-level applications. How organizations create valuable software applications becomes the focus.
Speaking of software, Longzhi has considerable experience in software development industry tools, including compliance tools, distributed development tools, upstream demand management tools, etc., which are our strengths. By using the tools selected by Longzhi, customers can lower the threshold for introducing software development ideas and achieve success faster.
Q: Regarding the version control and static analysis tools in the Longzhi automotive industry solution, can you introduce their application scenarios in automotive software development?
Most of the well-known automobile companies are century-old companies, characterized by large scale and heavy assets. They have many R&D centers (and they are relatively scattered), and even some design teams and major R&D teams of new Chinese car-making forces are distributed overseas. This requires a version system that can well support distributed development to provide support for collaboration between these different offices.
Now, we already have customers adopting this practice. For example, they have R&D centers in the UK and Chongqing, and the collaboration between these R&D centers, including the collaboration of various R&D materials, benefits from Perforce Helix Core, allowing them to achieve better control and sharing.
Another advantage of Perforce is that it can serve as a single source of truth. Why the repeated emphasis on a single source of truth? "Single" means that a single system has sufficient capabilities to manage the entire company's digital assets, and only then can it be called a single source of truth, which is exactly what the word means.
Regardless of the size of the team, whether it is a few people or tens of thousands of people, a unified system can be used to manage data. This means that resources are shared and accessed on the same platform, which is significantly more convenient than having data scattered everywhere, which is another important advantage.
In terms of static scanning, considering that cars involve personal safety, in addition to the traditional ISO 26262 public safety protocols and standards, newer automotive networking standards such as ISO 21434 should also be considered. These security standards require an authoritative static scanning tool to implement, and Helix QAC is the obvious choice.
In addition, there is a tool called Klocwork that can be used to analyze the vehicle system. Since car-machine systems are often developed using Android, the amount of code is very large. Klocwork is able to conduct in-depth analysis of these projects. These tools are very helpful for the automotive industry.
Q: Compared with SVN and Git, what are the unique advantages of Perforce Helix Core for the development of the automotive industry?
Both Git and SVN are widely used version management tools, but compared with Perforce Helix Core, they have significant differences in the amount of data they manage and the number of users. When these data change significantly, quantitative changes will lead to qualitative changes.
Although they are both version management, the problems they face are completely different in different orders of magnitude. If you want to use Git to manage 200T of data, it is simply impossible. The largest Git warehouse in the world may only have a few dozen GB in one group. This is a fundamental difference. In addition, Git and SVN are significantly different from Perforce Helix Core in terms of auditing, distributed deployment, branch management, etc.
For small teams, Git and SVN may be sufficient, I believe this. But across the entire company, if each team uses a different version management server, it will inevitably face data control and sharing issues throughout the organization. If you want to unify the source of data management across your company, Perforce Helix Core is the best choice. On the front end, you can consider using other version management tools (such as Git) to retain usage habits, but at the company-wide level, you can plan a unified disaster recovery plan, rule set, and upgrade strategy to ensure company-level data security.
Q: They are both static code scanning tools. What is the difference between Helix QAC and Klocwork?
In terms of compliance, especially in terms of standard coverage of public safety standards such as Misra or AUTOSAR, Helix QAC's coverage is higher, and Klocwork's coverage is relatively lower. This difference mainly stems from the difference in product positioning. Although they come from the same company, there are still some differences. Klocwork supports more programming languages and is easier to use, mainly due to these subtle differences.
Q: How do Helix QAC and Klocwork help meet code compliance standards such as ISO 21434 and ISO 26262?
ISO 26262 and ISO 21434 are relatively abstract and professional standards, so I can only briefly introduce them.
For example, if you want low complexity, stable or robust code, specific measures need to be taken to achieve this requirement. For example, the use of bug-prone language features is prohibited and only a subset is allowed. This may produce a set of inspection rules, such as Misra, Misra C, AUTOSAR, etc. By allowing the use of a subset of the language, error-prone usage is isolated and turned into an executable check. As long as the code passes the checks of these rules to a certain extent, it can be shown that the requirements of the standard are met.
However, there is still a problem. Even if you use compliant tools and compliant inspection rules, you still need to
A set of documents proves innocence. In this regard, Perforce original factory provides compliance certification to help improve the success rate of declaration.
Q: What are the advantages of Helix QAC and Klocwork compared with competing products?
Helix QAC has a history of more than 30 years and is considered a must-have, not an option, when it comes to compliance certification.
Klocwork has a perpetual license and supports multiple programming languages, which are its unique advantages.
Q: Digital Twin is an emerging concept in the automotive industry. What are the application examples of Perforce products?
Digital Twin technology is not only used in the automotive industry, but also in the gaming industry. Its essence has little to do with the specific industry, but is closely related to the technology itself. Whether it is the automotive industry or the gaming industry, as long as you use Digital Twin, Perforce provides you with excellent management support, including large data volumes, large files, and distributed collaboration, and can be well integrated with tools such as Git.
Q: What is the overall introduction to Longzhi’s automotive industry solutions?
(Longzhi integrates tools from world-renowned vendors such as Atlassian and Perforce, and is a market-proven tool.) In terms of upstream demand management, we provide Perforce’s Helix ALM, which can manage requirements, changes, bugs, tests, etc. . There is also Atlassian's Jira , which can be used for project requirements management, including bug management, although it may require a plug-in. Moreover, it supports different development models.
From the maintenance of upstream requirements down to the version control system, various documents, codes, drawings and even chip designs can be managed on Perforce Helix Core or Methodics IPLM.
Once this information is stored in Perforce Helix Core or Methodics IPLM , it can be reviewed and checked regularly. At the software level, through the Helix QAC and Klocwork just mentioned , open source components, static scanning and compliance checks can be performed. If you want to release products and other well-known software, our products will generally come with software development life cycle management.
Longzhi has accumulated rich experience in serving domestic customers and supporting them in using international products. We have a dedicated team dedicated to providing high-quality support for these products. When customers encounter problems or difficulties, we will quickly coordinate with the original company to jointly solve the customer's problems, and we have many successful cases as reference.
Based on our local base, we provide customers with the highest quality international products and the best local services. This is our unique advantage.
Q: You have previously won the title of "2022 Technical Hero" issued by Perforce. What makes you stand out from many competitors?
This is not just an award for me, I am just a representative of our team. Our team has always been adhering to the purpose of serving with heart. This is not only a commitment, but also our inner persistence. When we see that our efforts help customers solve problems quickly, or when we encounter difficulties, we quickly seek help from the original factory to ensure that customers' problems are solved quickly, our hearts are full of joy. Winning this award also shows that our professionalism and attitude have been recognized by the original manufacturer.
Q: How do you feel about participating in this Automotive Electronics and Software Technology Week?
One of my impressions from attending the conference is that the gap between hardware and software is quite obvious. It would be very helpful to the hardware team if they could take advantage of the rapid development model of software. Likewise, if the software team can better understand the design philosophy of the hardware, their development attitude will be more positive and cooperative.