ByteSnap Design, the UK-based embedded systems specialist, has published a practical guide to MISRA C compliance as demand grows for practical approaches to safety-critical software.
The guide, What Is MISRA? Your Guide to MISRA C Compliance in Practice, distilling lessons from more than £500,000 of automotive development work, outlines the day-to-day challenges engineers face when applying MISRA C standards, which underpin software development across the automotive sector and an increasing number of regulated industries.
Graeme Wintle, Director at ByteSnap Design, said that experience across multiple UK Tier 1 projects had shown that rigid rule-following was rarely the most effective route to compliance. “The most successful approaches combine technical rigour with commercial pragmatism,” he said. “The goal is safe, reliable automotive software delivered on time, and within budget.”
Originally developed for the automotive industry, MISRA C has since become a de facto standard in aerospace, medical devices, telecommunications, defence, and rail. Wintle added that perfect adherence to all rules was neither necessary nor commercially realistic, arguing instead for targeted compliance focused on areas that deliver the greatest safety gains, such as control flow and memory management.
ByteSnap, which has produced MISRA-compliant software for clients ranging from global carmakers to early-stage ventures, outlines a number of services including risk-based compliance planning, practical team training, legacy code integration, toolchain optimisation, deviation management, and documentation support.
The company’s guide highlights five lessons for engineering teams: avoid dogmatic rule-following, prioritise high-impact rules, adopt a risk-based approach for critical and legacy code, invest in appropriate tools and training, and view MISRA as a long-term quality investment that can reduce defects, accelerate certification, and strengthen commercial credibility.
