Parasoft Reviews

Summary: Overall a very good product that can be efficient and powerful in in the right hands. Their technical support is fantastic. Communications with their sales/customer teams can feel overbearing at times especially during product trials. Once set up is complete the tool works efficiently and is a great choice for DO-178 embedded software verification.

Positive: - Support for many different compilers, processors, and IDEs. The way the tool is architected lets it integrate seamlessly into existing DevOps pipelines, which was great for our team because we could make the static analysis and unit testing work within our existing pipeline
- Minimal compiler overhead for instrumentation means we spent less time fighting build errors with instrumented code and didn't need to tinker with their internal libraries or preprocessor definitions
- The C/C++ test tool focuses on unit tests, letting us test code with code. Most DO-178 verification tools rely on clunky GUIs and nested pages of drop-down menus that quickly get cumbersome with even moderately complex code. This lets us write better tests faster.
- A lot of configuration required to get the tool running, but it actually isn't that complicated. There are a lot of training materials on their site, but we didn't actually need to use them to get fully up and running using C/C++Test.
- They are very quick to hop on a support call if anything isn't going well during setup. We were never blocked on any one issue for very long.

Negative: - C/C++Test requires the use of the Eclipse-based IDE, which can be a bit clunky. This is improved with C/C++Test CT which has VSCode integration, but CC++Test CT doesn't yet have all the features we need for a full verification effort of high-DAL DO-178 software.
- During the sales process it was hard to discern which features were available with what product. We liked the option of GTest integration but that was C/C++Test CT only but if we got that then we wouldn't get stubbing or qualification evidence. And the qualification kit is sold separately. Their site or marketing materials should have a clear table on what is included with each subscription.
- The sales and customer success teams set up a LOT of meetings during the demonstration and product onboarding periods. This could be a positive or a negative depending on your team's needs, but it was a bit much for us.

Summary: We will continue to use and invest in Parasoft tools for our CI/CD process; to have static-analysis, unit-testing, and potentially requirements tracking in one tool makes it very attractive.

Positive: We primarily use the tool for MISRA compliance and it has proven to be very effective in that regards. The DTP dashboard is easy to use and generating reports is straightforward. The fact that we can use the same Parasoft toolset for unit-testing and potentially requirements tracking is also very interesting to us.

Negative: While MISRA report generation is easy to do, I believe there could be more options available to tailor the report to our needs. Also, I have has inconsistent behavior in generating some of the required support files for projects, needed for C/C++ test to accurately scan a project.

Summary: My view might be skewed because of working with legacy embedded project. As with almost all things Embedded, customization is needed.

Parasoft is a decent tool to use with Embedded but don't expect a quick and easy ride, especially if you have a large constraints on memory, available flash space etc.

Parasoft definitely can be used in such scenario, but be prepared to have Parasoft Support Engineers on call. Some particular customizations are not outlined in documentation, as well as more detailed description what is going under the hood (for example what increases ram/flash memory usage).

Positive: - Decent support for Embedded applications/targets/hardware
- Documentation and examples were sufficient to start setting up Parasoft with "blank" Embedded Project that
- Good integration with Eclipse
- CLI interface
- Application Monitoring (Runtime coverage) & Unit Testing options

Negative: - Amount of customization needed and "trickiness"
- Silent fails eg. Building Executable with no Unit Tests generates no warning/error, only when running on target you notice that no UT's were run

Summary: Once set up, cpptest works very reliably. The support team is always available in case of problems

Positive: Use in Eclipse works very well
Static code analysis is stable and helps to significantly improve the code
Good documentation
Support responds quickly and reliably

Negative: Integration in CMake projects is complicated
Complex initial setup

Summary: Parasoft Jtest is an excellent solution for Java code testing, particularly for teams that require static analysis, automated unit testing, and compliance validation. Its high level of automation and seamless CI/CD integration makes it a great fit for DevOps teams.

However, the initial setup and violation management could be improved to make the tool more user-friendly. Despite these minor drawbacks, Jtest remains a highly recommended choice for teams looking to enhance code quality and streamline their testing processes.

Positive: Powerful Static Analysis & Compliance
Jtest provides an effective static code analysis engine that detects security vulnerabilities, bugs, and coding issues early in the development cycle. It supports industry standards such as OWASP, CWE making it an excellent choice for code review

Automated Unit Test Generation & Code Coverage
One of Jtest’s standout features is its ability to automatically generate unit tests and mocks for existing code, significantly reducing the time spent on writing tests manually. The code coverage reports are detailed and easy to interpret, helping teams identify untested portions of the codebase.

CI/CD & DevOps Integration
Jtest integrates seamlessly with popular tools like Jenkins, Maven, Gradle, and SonarQube, as well as IDEs like IntelliJ and Eclipse. This makes it a great fit for teams implementing automated testing pipelines in their environment.

User-Friendly Interface & Detailed Reports
The interface is well-organized, and reports provide clear insights into code violations and quality metrics. Additionally, the Development Testing Platform (DTP) centralizes data analysis, enhancing collaboration between development and QA teams.

Comprehensive Reporting & Customizable Dashboards
Jtest provides detailed, customizable reports and dashboards that help teams monitor code quality, identify trends, and track violations over time. The ability to customize widgets and filter data makes it easier to focus on the most relevant insights, improving decision-making and prioritization of fixes.

Negative: Complex Initial Setup.
The installation and configuration process can be time-consuming, especially for teams unfamiliar with static analysis tools. Some widgets and reports, such as the Resource Groups widget, require additional fine-tuning to function as expected.

Summary: Overall good experience with Parasoft tool, Parasoft provides test automation for all softwares covers Unit test coverage and Static Analysis

Positive: Faster defect detection.
AI-powered static analysis and unit testing can help identify and fix defects early in the development process.
Reduced test execution time.
Automation can help reduce the time it takes to run tests.
Improved compliance.
Automated testing and verification can help ensure compliance with safety, security, and reliability standards.
Reduced risk.
Automated testing can help reduce the number of high-impact defects that are found late in the development process.
Improved test environment.
Service virtualization can help testers create, scale, and share virtualized services.
Improved test management.
Environment management can help teams replicate and test in conditions that mimic production.
Improved reporting.
Reporting and analytics dashboards can help provide a centralized view of quality.
Improved test automation.
Parasoft offers a variety of testing scenarios, including API testing.

Negative: Difficult to understand for the new users.
No more information regarding Parasoft CLI.
Faced difficulties to integrate the CLI tool with runtime dependencies.

Summary: Overall, we were shocked at just how much better Parasoft's tools were than their competitors in the DO-178 space. We tried LDRA, Rapita, VectorCAST, CodeSonar...Generally, we had very negative opinions of all of these tools across the board, and were ready to accept that there weren't any good tools in the space. Parasoft has implemented a lot of common-sense solutions to the problems posed by DO-178 and DO-330, and the vast majority of the time they worked out of the box with no issues, unlike any of these other tools.

Writing C code to test C code was the single most important thing for us, as it allows us to write sensible, complex tests for complicated data-driven interfaces quickly, and with a sense that the tests are sound. All of their competitors use spreadsheets or click-and-drag GUIs for testing, and we found that experience to be so horrific for writing good, comprehensive tests that it made us wonder about the soundness of safety programs across the industry. Parasoft's approach seems like common sense, but nobody else is doing it, and that's insanity.

I wish that their full C++ Professional suite integrated better with VSCode and VSPro like their C++ Standard/CT toolsuite did. I also wish that they supported more targets (like x86 Greenhills), and had support for importing requirements from Cameo Enterprise Architecture.

Positive: - On-Target testing was unbelievably easy compared to LDRA or Rapita

- Tests are code, rather than spreadsheets. We spent months evaluating all of Parasoft's competitors before we got to them, and no other DO-330 certifiable tool allowed us to write our tests as code. ALL of them were finicky spreadsheet based tools that made writing complex tests so difficult. With Parasoft, we could write regular unit tests in C using our own headers.

- Parasoft provides CMake integration, which made integrating it into our codebase much easier than their competitors. Generating a project was just another target.

- Unlike Parasoft's competitors, their instrumentation did not need to be modified at all. We didn't need to modify their integration library to avoid preprocessor hiccups like we did with other tools.

- It took WEEKS with other tools to get our codebase properly instrumented, and extract coverage from the target. With Parasoft, it took me 16 hours across two work days, and I ran into very few issues that were the fault of the tool.

- It worked flawlessly with LynxOS-178, an RTOS that they don't even actively support.

- Most of Parasoft's default testing configurations worked with little to no customization, even in an RTOS environment that they themselves had not validated.

- Overall, the user experience was above and beyond what we expected from the competition

Negative: - C++Test Professional does not integrate with your IDE, and you need to use their eclipse-based IDE for writing tests. This adds another interface that our team needs to use. C++ Test CT DOES integrate directly with VSCode, but they don't provide test generation, stubbing, etc. that are usually required to get over the 100% code coverage hump in DO-178C programs.

- Parasoft does not provide a tool for Worst Case Execution Time (WCET) analysis for DO-178. Their primary competitors in the space, LDRA and Rapita, do. We liked Parasoft so much that we bought them anyways, but we'll have to go to a competitor to buy this specific functionality.

- Parasoft's tools lacked integration with Cameo for requirements tracing, which is the tool that we're using for systems engineering and requirements management. It's also the tool that the DoD is requiring for most of its new aviation programs.

- Our initial experience with Parasoft was somewhat negative. We heard "No" a lot more than their competitors. No, you can't try out MISRA 2023 static analysis, no we won't support some of the targets that you're considering, no we won't let you evaluate the tool on your own. Their competitors allowed us to do all of these things, and it made us suspicious of the quality of the product. After some discussions, however, a lot of those "No"s turned into "Yes"es. All of their competitors either supported all of the targets we were asking about (Greenhills 64-bit x86, LynxOS-178), or provided a mechanism that allowed us to implement that support themselves via compiler inspection. Their competitors also allowed us to test out all of the features of their tool as a part of the evaluation, whereas Parasoft initially held some back. We did eventually work around most of these road blocks after discussing with their sales teams, but a lot of the restrictive policies around evaluations nearly made us want to drop them from consideration. I'm glad that we did not, because the tools are actually VERY good.

Summary: Parasoft C/C++test is a robust and rich tool that significantly enhances to improve the code quality, aids in maintaining compliance with industry standards like MISRA, and improves testing processes. However, it comes with challenges such as high cost, complexity, and potential performance overhead. Teams need to evaluate these aspects to determine if it aligns with their budget, expertise, and project requirements.

Positive: PARASOFT C/C++TEST HIGHLIGHTS Solid in all categories - Strong on static analysis, automated unit testing and code coverage; ensures high code quality improvement & standards compliance.

Negative: Users may also struggle with the complexity of setup, integration issues with existing workflows, a less intuitive user interface, and sporadically unreliable error detections. It is crucial to carefully consider how Parasoft C/C++test might fit into your development processes. One major issue faced is merging result logs cumulatively for loading into archived reports in 2023(10.6) Version.

Summary: Helps our organization focus on developing high-quality software that's compliant with industry standards.

Positive: Provides detailed reports and dashboards that offer insights into test coverage, defect density, code quality, and compliance. Parasoft’s static analysis tools help in identifying code defects, security vulnerabilities, and compliance issues early in the development cycle. Customer support is always helpful and kind.

Negative: The platform’s comprehensive feature set can be overwhelming, leading to a steep learning curve for new users. Proper training and onboarding are essential to effectively utilize the tools. Although Parasoft integrates with many CI/CD tools, integrating it with custom or less common development environments can be challenging and may require additional effort.

Summary: Flexible, configurable tool to statically analyze C++ code. Rule set licensing is somewhat complicated and non-intuitive.

Positive: Integrates with Eclipse via plugin and stand-alone command line tools, supports code generated by embedded cross-compilers such as arm-none-eabi-g++, uses project Makefile's to process source files, supports multiple C++ standards, has many different rule sets, including MISRA, MISRA C++, AUTOSAR, Joint Strike Fighter, DISA ASD STIG, ...

Uses project make files to process and analyze sources.

Negative: No macOS support only Linux and Windows. Requires use of a virtual machine when using macOS as the host OS.

Summary: Good, would recommend to keep as our SCA tool. Base use was easy to set up and would be quick to spin new users up on the tool.

Positive: Parasoft was easier to set up than any of the other SCA tools we tested. It allows for a lot of customization.

Negative: We had some issues getting our full licenses from Parasoft (example: unit tests)

Summary: Parasoft is a capable and feature-rich unit testing solution for C/C++ that shines in structured testing environments and can even be used for CI/CD pipelines. However, it demands patience and technical persistence due to a dated UI, unclear configurations, and occasional instability. For teams willing to invest the time to master its quirks and supplement it with custom infrastructure (e.g., custom Docker images, bash scripts), it offers strong ROI through automation, consistency, and integration capabilities.

Positive: Powerful features like generate stubs, generate test cases, and data sources streamline unit test creation and support parameterized testing, improving test coverage and reducing code duplication.

The DTP (Development Testing Platform) facilitates sharing test configurations across teams, promoting environment consistency.

Flexible reporting options (PDF, xUnit, HTML) make it easy to distribute test results.

cpptestcli offers helpful command-line access, making integration into CI/CD pipelines (e.g., GitLab via Docker) possible and efficient.

Technical support is responsive and helpful, which offsets some of the platform’s steep learning curve.

Negative: Setup can be brittle: project and workspace corruption errors (e.g., test log or temp folder access issues) often require complete workspace recreation.

Parasoft enforces rigid file structures and configuration heuristics, which may require disruptive codebase restructuring.

Test configuration and environment settings are often hard to locate, poorly documented, or missing altogether.

Generated tests provide only a starting structure, requiring manual rewriting for meaningful coverage.

cpptestcli lacks parity with the full IDE, especially around BDF imports and workspace manipulation.

DTP’s UI is dated, and settings management is cumbersome, requiring manual export/import for updates.

No official Docker image for the Professional version of C/C++test—users must build and maintain their own.

Poor support for collaborative workflows: heavy reliance on absolute paths and local environment settings makes it difficult to share and sync projects across team members seamlessly.

Summary: It's challenging to setup Parasoft. This make it difficult to convince the teammates to use it.

Positive: Good support for static code analysis.
Especially to tailor all settings to your needs e.g. generate a subset of misr2012 etc.

Negative: Licensing:
to use with vs code we need a different desktop license.
to use with docker on our build machine also requires a new license

Summary: Satisfied. will continue to use Parasoft BUT I must say that because some features I need are not supported - I will browse for alternatives.

Positive: I use c/c++ test and DTP version 2024.1. my interface is usually DTP GUI. the c/c++ test execute via scripts and i am less aware to the capabilities. in DTP I can define dashboards and see stats in a very clear way. the configuration is very agile and can be changed Easly to meet my requirements. support team communication works great.

Negative: I found few bugs in DTP GUI. I don't have easy way to report about these bugs to Parasoft support team. HIS standard is declared as supported but there is no way to generate clear report. some compilers we are using are not supported. some features I need are not available in the tool.