7. Conclusions#
The automated testing and validation capabilities of Reactis can quickly identify issues in models and code. Using the Reactis API, these capabilities can be integrated into CI/CD checks, making CI/CD significantly more effective. The earlier Reactis is used in the development process, the greater the benefit.
The overhead to use Reactis is low: to enable Reactis CI/CD checks on a model (or subsystem within a model), a harness needs to be created. A harness defines the inputs, outputs and configuration variables, and requires ranges for the inputs. Creation of a harness can also be automated via the Reactis API if the required information is available in MATLAB.
Although there is a Reactis API for C, it is recommended that Reactis CI/CD checks are written using the Reactis API for MATLAB when developing Simulink models because this allows integration with MATLAB/Simulink features. MATLAB supports several major CI/CD frameworks, including GitLab.
This white paper discusses how GitLab CI/CD features can be used for Reactis checks, demonstrating this in an example branch pipeline (run on each commit to the GitLab server instance) that:
performs testing and validation using Reactis Tester, and
runs regression test suites using Reactis Simulator.
The example .m scripts are easily customized for a particular development process.