MISRA

MISRA, short for Motor Industry Software Reliability Association, refers to a family of software development guidelines for C and C++ used in safety‑critical embedded systems, especially in the automotive industry. The guidelines aim to improve reliability, portability, and maintainability by encouraging safer coding practices and reducing common sources of fault.

The MISRA guidelines originated with the automotive sector in the 1990s and have since evolved into a formal set of standards maintained by The MISRA Consortium. The most widely known are MISRA C (with editions such as MISRA C:1998, MISRA C:2004, and MISRA C:2012) and MISRA C++ (2008). These documents provide rule statements, along with advisory notes and rationale, to guide developers away from unsafe language features and toward verifiably safe patterns. They emphasize avoiding undefined or implementation-defined behavior, improving portability across compilers, and supporting static analysis and formal reviews.

Conformance in MISRA‑driven projects is typically demonstrated through a combination of static analysis, code reviews, and documentation. The guidelines distinguish between mandatory rules and advisory guidelines, with deviations allowed only when properly justified and documented. In practice, MISRA compliance is widely used in automotive safety assessments and is increasingly adopted in other industries with stringent reliability requirements, such as aerospace and medical devices.

While praised for enhancing safety and quality, MISRA is also seen as demanding and sometimes rigid, potentially increasing development effort and tool dependency. Ongoing updates and amendments address ambiguities and align the guidelines with evolving languages and industry needs.