Tools

In common use for program construction are tools for compilation, editing, debugging, configuration and version management, execution profiling, coverage measurement and other testing tools. In some specialized areas (compiler construction, databases, user-interfaces) program generators are being applied successfully. For researchers, it is rather disappointing to see that the high-tech tools and techniques that result from research projects only have a very limited impact in practice (Hoare, 1996). A single version management tool such as, for instance, CVS (Cederqvist, 1993) has probably done more for software quality than all existing verification techniques combined.