Compliance Standards (DO-178C / ISO 26262 / IEC 62304)

What are these standards?

DO-178C is the avionics software standard. It defines how to design, implement, verify, and certify software that flies airplanes. Every line of safety-critical flight software is assessed at one of five DAL (Development Assurance Level) tiers, from DAL-E (no safety effect) to DAL-A (catastrophic failure can bring down the aircraft).

ISO 26262 is the automotive functional-safety standard. It applies the same rigor to road-vehicle software (braking, steering, powertrain). Its integrity levels are called ASIL (Automotive Safety Integrity Level), from QM (quality management, no hazard) to ASIL D (highest hazard).

IEC 62304 is the medical-device software lifecycle standard. It classifies software into safety classes A, B, and C based on the severity of harm a failure can cause.

All three demand the same underlying evidence:

  1. Requirement traceability – every high-level requirement (HLR) is traced by a -- HLR-XXXX tag in source.

  2. No orphan tags – every tag in source maps to a defined HLR.

  3. Tests passing – the test suite has zero failures (except at the lowest tier).

  4. Minimum SPARK level – the formal-proof bar for the selected rigor tier.

adacovex computes all four checks once and re-labels the result per standard. The same inputs feed the same outputs. Only the integrity-level label changes.

When to use which standard

Domain

Standard

CLI flag

Levels

Avionics

DO-178C

--dal=

A, B, C, D, E

Automotive

ISO 26262

--asil=

A, B, C, D, QM

Medical

IEC 62304

--class=

A, B, C

If your project targets multiple domains, --standard=all runs one assessment and emits badges and reports for every standard without re-scanning.

What the rigor tiers mean

Rigor tier

DO-178C

ISO 26262

IEC 62304

Min SPARK

Tests

HLRs

Catastrophic

DAL A

ASIL D

Class C

Gold

Yes

Yes

Hazardous

DAL B

ASIL C

Class B

Silver

Yes

Yes

Major

DAL C

ASIL B

Class A

Bronze

Yes

Yes

Minor

DAL D

ASIL A

–

Stone

Yes

Yes

No safety effect

DAL E

QM

–

–

No

Yes

The tier placement is a per-project policy choice. The standards do not define a one-to-one correspondence. adacovex’s default mapping is shown above. Use --standard=NAME to select the labelling standard. Use --dal=LEVEL to pin the shared rigor tier.

Rigor-tier mapping

Rigor tier

DO-178C

ISO 26262

IEC 62304

Min SPARK

Tests

HLRs

Catastrophic

DAL A

ASIL D

Class C

Gold

Yes

Yes

Hazardous

DAL B

ASIL C

Class B

Silver

Yes

Yes

Major

DAL C

ASIL B

Class A

Bronze

Yes

Yes

Minor

DAL D

ASIL A

–

Stone

Yes

Yes

No safety effect

DAL E

QM

–

–

No

Yes

The exact tier placement of each standard’s levels is a per-project policy choice. The standards do not define a one-to-one correspondence. The table above is adacovex’s default mapping. --standard=NAME selects the labelling standard. --dal=LEVEL pins the shared rigor tier (see Implementation).

Assessment criteria (shared)

The four checks stay identical across standards. Only the names change:

  1. Requirement traceability – every HLR defined in docs/compliance/HLR.md is traced by a -- HLR-XXXX tag in source.

  2. No orphan tags – every in-source HLR maps to a defined HLR.

  3. Tests passing – zero failures (not enforced at the lowest tier).

  4. Minimum SPARK level – the proof bar for the selected rigor tier.

Because the checks are shared, the compliance artifacts are identical too: ISO 26262 and IEC 62304 require no different evidence or documents than DO-178C. The same inputs (compliance/HLR.md, source traceability, proof summary, test summary) feed the same outputs (VERIFICATION.md, TRACE.md, the proof-aware SBOM, and the compliance SVG badges) for every standard. Only the integrity-level label printed inside them changes (DAL-C, ASIL B, Class A).

Selecting a standard on the CLI

Each standard has a dedicated level flag, so your intent is unambiguous on the command line (full flag details in the CLI reference). The flags all resolve to the same shared rigor tier:

Standard

Flag

Levels

Example (tier)

DO-178C

--dal=

A, B, C, D, E

--dal=C -> DAL-C (Major)

ISO 26262

--asil=

A, B, C, D, QM

--asil=B -> ASIL B (Major)

IEC 62304

--class=

A, B, C

--class=A -> Class A (Major)

You can also use --standard=iso26262 --dal=C to get the same result as --asil=B. The dedicated flags exist so a reader of the command line can see “ASIL B” (or “Class A”) without decoding the shared tier.

--standard=all runs one assessment at the shared tier and emits badges and reports for every standard – do178c.svg, iso26262.svg, and iec62304.svg – without re-scanning, re-proving, or re-parsing anything. The evidence is identical across standards. The three badges therefore always agree on Achieved/Unmet. Only the level label changes.

Dashboard and SBOM standard-awareness

The served dashboard (--serve) and the proof-aware SBOM both record the assessment standard and its native level label, so a browser or a CycloneDX / SPDX / Markdown consumer sees the right name for the selected standard. Like the sbom subcommand, --serve defaults to all standards when no --standard / --asil / --class flag is given. The dashboard renders every standard’s level at the shared tier. An explicit standard flag narrows it. The SBOM’s adacovex:standard / adacovex:level properties:

-- flag

adacovex:standard

adacovex:level

--dal=C

DO-178C

DAL-C

--asil=B

ISO 26262

ASIL B

--class=A

IEC 62304

Class A

--standard=all

DO-178C, ISO 26262, IEC 62304

DAL-C / ASIL B / Class A

The adacovex:dal_target property always carries the shared tier (DAL-A.. DAL-D) regardless of the labelling standard. --standard=all joins all three standard names and level labels into the single adacovex:standard and adacovex:level properties. One document carries every standard’s assessment.

Implementation

  • Compliance_Standard type (DO_178C, ISO_26262, IEC_62304) with To_String / To_Standard / Standard_Slug conversions and the dedicated To_ASIL / To_Class level parsers in Adacovex.Types.

  • --standard=NAME CLI flag (default do178c, plus all) selects the labelling standard. --dal=LEVEL is the shared rigor tier (A–E). The dedicated --asil=LEVEL / --class=LEVEL flags set both the standard and the tier in one step.

  • Types.Standard_Level_Name maps a standard + tier to its label (DAL-C, ASIL B, Class A, and more). Assess_Standard runs the same evidence checks as Assess_DAL while recording the standard. Every renderer (ANSI report, SVG badge, HTML dashboard, JSON API, Markdown report, and SBOM) then prints the standard-specific level without re-running scanning, proof parsing, or test parsing.

  • Min_SPARK_For still drives the per-tier proof bar. The tiers share one lookup because the standards only re-label the levels.

Each standard has a dedicated reference page with its level definitions and criteria: