Parasoft Reviews

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: 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.