With the pending release of James Grenning's new book Test Driven Development for Embedded C there has been a lot interest in TDD in the embedded space.
Jack Ganssle did a two part interview with Mr. Grenning this summer [2010], on the subject of TDD in Embedded Development:
Something that I have found very useful is an automatic build or serial number generated with each invocation of Make. The number can be accessed from C for use in version messages, or in the output from the invocation of Make directly.
This technique came out of a discussion by Matt VanDeWerk and Dave Hylands on the AVR-GCC list in 2005.
Create a file called 'buildnumber' that says this in the same directory as your Makefile:
#-------------------Cut Line -----------------------------------# # This is the current build number of the latest build # DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE - it is updated automagically # by the build process. BUILDNUMBER=0 #-------------------Cut Line -----------------------------------#
In the Makefile add these lines:
#-------------------Cut Line -----------------------------------# # Add before any 'all:', or other target: # Auto-incrementing number, which may be used in version numbers: include buildnumber NEW_BUILDNUMBER = $(shell echo $$(( $(BUILDNUMBER) + 1 ))) CDEFS += -DNEW_BUILDNUMBER=$(NEW_BUILDNUMBER) CDEFS += -DNEW_BUILDNUMBER_TEXT=\"$(NEW_BUILDNUMBER)\" %.elf: $(OBJ) @echo Test run: $(NEW_BUILDNUMBER) # Do normal stuff here, append these two lines, which rewrite the # buildnumber file for the next Make invocation: @echo "# Automatically generated file - do not edit" > buildnumber @echo "BUILDNUMBER=$(NEW_BUILDNUMBER)" >> buildnumber #-------------------Cut Line -----------------------------------#
/*-------------------Cut Line -----------------------------------*/ /* C Example usage: static uint8_t const BuildNumber_str[] = NEW_BUILDNUMBER_TEXT; /* Build number */ /*-------------------Cut Line -----------------------------------*/
Make does not get enough credit for being the powerful tool that it is.
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