Task Dependency Analysis for Regression Test Selection of Embedded Programs

Abstract—Execution dependencies arise among the tasks of an embedded program due to issues such as task priority, task precedence, and intertask communication. We argue that execution dependencies among tasks need to be suitably considered in various embedded software engineering activities such as debugging, regression testing, and computation of complexity metrics. In this letter, we discuss how task execution dependencies among real-time tasks can be identified from static code analysis. Subsequently, we briefly describe an application of our analysis to regression test selection. Index Terms—Embedded systems, intertask communication, real-time, task execution dependencies