Wanja Zaeske - DevOps for Airborne Software: Exploring Modern Approaches (SpringerBriefs in Computer Science)

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It was the 2019 SciTech Forum; we were discussing at the Software Technical Committee of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) with esteemed colleagues from the major industry players and influential academic and research organizations how aerospace software engineering is lacking in keeping up with the game-changing Agile practices. Legacy processes were providing low risk, on the one hand, and proven design assurance practices, on the other hand, hindering the potential for streamlined and Agile software development. How could modern approachessuch as DevOpsbe adapted so that they can provide agility while supporting the regulations, such as DO-178C? These discussions led to a well-attended and well-received panel session about DevOps at the 2021 SciTech Forum.

It was then hard to find any publications about DevOps for airborne systems. There was also no real tool, technology, or solution provider for this domain. That motivated us to start research on DevOps for airborne software to explore modern Agile practices using demonstrators, to identify the unique challenges of this highly regulated domain, and to develop approaches to tackle them. Early results were published in 2020 at the Dependable DevOps Workshop within the International Conference on Computer Safety, Reliability and Security (SAFECOMP) and in 2021 at the AIAA SciTech Forum. We shared them at the abovementioned panel session. This SpringerBrief now presents the round story that reports on our exploration in using modern approaches to implement DevOps practices for avionic software. It tries to render all the steps of the DevOps cycle by promoting one or another tool or technology that may suit well for airborne systems. The highlights include Rust, the modern systems programming language, Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) using Rust, DevOps automation with Nix and Hydra, and virtualization with the embedded hypervisor XtratuM Next Generation.

We invite the reader to this first experience report about using DevOps for airborne software. We further encourage the reader to continue the development of this promising direction for advancing the current state of the art in aerospace software engineering.