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A.J. Rouvoet
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Specifying and mechanically verifying type safe programming languages requires significant effort. This effort can in theory be reduced by defining and reusing pre-verified, modular components. In practice, however, existing approaches to modular mechanical verification require many times as much specification code as plain, monolithic definitions. This makes it hard to develop new reusable components, and makes existing component specifications hard to grasp. We present an alternative approach based on intrinsically-typed interpreters, which reduces the size and complexity of modular specifications as compared to existing approaches. Furthermore, we introduce a new abstraction for safe-by-construction specification and composition of pre-verified type safe language components: language fragments. Language fragments are about as concise and easy to develop as plain, monolithic intrinsically-typed interpreters, but require about 10 times less code than previous approaches to modular mechanical verification of type safety.
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Specifying and mechanically verifying type safe programming languages requires significant effort. This effort can in theory be reduced by defining and reusing pre-verified, modular components. In practice, however, existing approaches to modular mechanical verification require many times as much specification code as plain, monolithic definitions. This makes it hard to develop new reusable components, and makes existing component specifications hard to grasp. We present an alternative approach based on intrinsically-typed interpreters, which reduces the size and complexity of modular specifications as compared to existing approaches. Furthermore, we introduce a new abstraction for safe-by-construction specification and composition of pre-verified type safe language components: language fragments. Language fragments are about as concise and easy to develop as plain, monolithic intrinsically-typed interpreters, but require about 10 times less code than previous approaches to modular mechanical verification of type safety.
Programming language implementations bridge the gap between what the program developer sees and understands, and what the computer executes. Hence, it is crucial for the reliability of software that language implementations are correct. Correctness of an implementation is judged with respect to a criterion. In this thesis, we focus on the criterion type correctness, striking a balance between the difficulty of the assessment of the criterion and its usefulness to rule out errors throughout a programming language implementation. If both the front- and the back-end fulfill their role in maintaining the type contract between the programmer and the language implementation, then unexpected type errors will not occur when the program is executed. To verify type correctness throughout a language implementation, we want to establish it formally. That is, we aim to give a specification of program typing in a formal language, and to give a mathematical proof that every part of the language implementation satisfies the necessary property to make the whole implementation type-correct. Type checkers ought to be sound and only accept programs that are indeed typeable according to the specification of the language. Interpreters should be type safe, and reduce expressions to values of the same type. Program compilers should preserve well-typing when they transform programs. These properties are essential for implementations of typed programming languages, ensuring that the typing of the source program is a meaningful notion that can be trusted by the programmer to prevent certain errors from occurring during program execution. A conventional formal type-
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Programming language implementations bridge the gap between what the program developer sees and understands, and what the computer executes. Hence, it is crucial for the reliability of software that language implementations are correct. Correctness of an implementation is judged with respect to a criterion. In this thesis, we focus on the criterion type correctness, striking a balance between the difficulty of the assessment of the criterion and its usefulness to rule out errors throughout a programming language implementation. If both the front- and the back-end fulfill their role in maintaining the type contract between the programmer and the language implementation, then unexpected type errors will not occur when the program is executed. To verify type correctness throughout a language implementation, we want to establish it formally. That is, we aim to give a specification of program typing in a formal language, and to give a mathematical proof that every part of the language implementation satisfies the necessary property to make the whole implementation type-correct. Type checkers ought to be sound and only accept programs that are indeed typeable according to the specification of the language. Interpreters should be type safe, and reduce expressions to values of the same type. Program compilers should preserve well-typing when they transform programs. These properties are essential for implementations of typed programming languages, ensuring that the typing of the source program is a meaningful notion that can be trusted by the programmer to prevent certain errors from occurring during program execution. A conventional formal type-
To avoid compilation errors it is desirable to verify that a compiler is type correct-i.e., given well-typed source code, it always outputs well-typed target code. This can be done intrinsically by implementing it as a function in a dependently typed programming language, such as Agda. This function manipulates data types of well-typed source and target programs, and is therefore type correct by construction. A key challenge in implementing an intrinsically typed compiler is the representation of labels in bytecode. Because label names are global, bytecode typing appears to be inherently a non-compositional, whole-program property. The individual operations of the compiler do not preserve this property, which requires the programmer to reason about labels, which spoils the compiler definition with proof terms. In this paper, we address this problem using a new nameless and co-contextual representation of typed global label binding, which is compositional. Our key idea is to use linearity to ensure that all labels are defined exactly once. To write concise compilers that manipulate programs in our representation, we develop a linear, dependently typed, shallowly embedded language in Agda, based on separation logic. We show that this language enables the concise specification and implementation of intrinsically typed operations on bytecode, culminating in an intrinsically typed compiler for a language with structured control-flow.
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To avoid compilation errors it is desirable to verify that a compiler is type correct-i.e., given well-typed source code, it always outputs well-typed target code. This can be done intrinsically by implementing it as a function in a dependently typed programming language, such as Agda. This function manipulates data types of well-typed source and target programs, and is therefore type correct by construction. A key challenge in implementing an intrinsically typed compiler is the representation of labels in bytecode. Because label names are global, bytecode typing appears to be inherently a non-compositional, whole-program property. The individual operations of the compiler do not preserve this property, which requires the programmer to reason about labels, which spoils the compiler definition with proof terms. In this paper, we address this problem using a new nameless and co-contextual representation of typed global label binding, which is compositional. Our key idea is to use linearity to ensure that all labels are defined exactly once. To write concise compilers that manipulate programs in our representation, we develop a linear, dependently typed, shallowly embedded language in Agda, based on separation logic. We show that this language enables the concise specification and implementation of intrinsically typed operations on bytecode, culminating in an intrinsically typed compiler for a language with structured control-flow.
An intrinsically-typed definitional interpreter is a concise specification of dynamic semantics, that is executable and type safe by construction. Unfortunately, scaling intrinsically-typed definitional interpreters to more complicated object languages often results in definitions that are cluttered with manual proof work. For linearly-typed languages (including session-typed languages) one has to prove that the interpreter, as well as all the operations on semantic components, treat values linearly. We present new methods and tools that make it possible to implement intrinsically-typed definitional interpreters for linearly-typed languages in a way that hides the majority of the manual proof work. Inspired by separation logic, we develop reusable and composable abstractions for programming with linear operations using dependent types. Using these abstractions, we define interpreters for linear lambda calculi with strong references, concurrency, and session-typed communication in Agda
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An intrinsically-typed definitional interpreter is a concise specification of dynamic semantics, that is executable and type safe by construction. Unfortunately, scaling intrinsically-typed definitional interpreters to more complicated object languages often results in definitions that are cluttered with manual proof work. For linearly-typed languages (including session-typed languages) one has to prove that the interpreter, as well as all the operations on semantic components, treat values linearly. We present new methods and tools that make it possible to implement intrinsically-typed definitional interpreters for linearly-typed languages in a way that hides the majority of the manual proof work. Inspired by separation logic, we develop reusable and composable abstractions for programming with linear operations using dependent types. Using these abstractions, we define interpreters for linear lambda calculi with strong references, concurrency, and session-typed communication in Agda
Knowing when to ask
Sound scheduling of name resolution in type checkers derived from declarative specifications
Journal article
(2020)
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Arjen Rouvoet, Hendrik Van Antwerpen, Casper Bach Poulsen, Robbert Krebbers, Eelco Visser
There is a large gap between the specification of type systems and the implementation of their type checkers, which impedes reasoning about the soundness of the type checker with respect to the specification. A vision to close this gap is to automatically obtain type checkers from declarative programming language specifications. This moves the burden of proving correctness from a case-by-case basis for concrete languages to a single correctness proof for the specification language. This vision is obstructed by an aspect common to all programming languages: name resolution. Naming and scoping are pervasive and complex aspects of the static semantics of programming languages. Implementations of type checkers for languages with name binding features such as modules, imports, classes, and inheritance interleave collection of binding information (i.e., declarations, scoping structure, and imports) and querying that information. This requires scheduling those two aspects in such a way that query answers are stable-i.e., they are computed only after all relevant binding structure has been collected. Type checkers for concrete languages accomplish stability using language-specific knowledge about the type system. In this paper we give a language-independent characterization of necessary and sufficient conditions to guarantee stability of name and type queries during type checking in terms of critical edges in an incomplete scope graph. We use critical edges to give a formal small-step operational semantics to a declarative specification language for type systems, that achieves soundness by delaying queries that may depend on missing information. This yields type checkers for the specified languages that are sound by construction-i.e., they schedule queries so that the answers are stable, and only accept programs that are name-and type-correct according to the declarative language specification. We implement this approach, and evaluate it against specifications of a small module and record language, as well as subsets of Java and Scala.
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There is a large gap between the specification of type systems and the implementation of their type checkers, which impedes reasoning about the soundness of the type checker with respect to the specification. A vision to close this gap is to automatically obtain type checkers from declarative programming language specifications. This moves the burden of proving correctness from a case-by-case basis for concrete languages to a single correctness proof for the specification language. This vision is obstructed by an aspect common to all programming languages: name resolution. Naming and scoping are pervasive and complex aspects of the static semantics of programming languages. Implementations of type checkers for languages with name binding features such as modules, imports, classes, and inheritance interleave collection of binding information (i.e., declarations, scoping structure, and imports) and querying that information. This requires scheduling those two aspects in such a way that query answers are stable-i.e., they are computed only after all relevant binding structure has been collected. Type checkers for concrete languages accomplish stability using language-specific knowledge about the type system. In this paper we give a language-independent characterization of necessary and sufficient conditions to guarantee stability of name and type queries during type checking in terms of critical edges in an incomplete scope graph. We use critical edges to give a formal small-step operational semantics to a declarative specification language for type systems, that achieves soundness by delaying queries that may depend on missing information. This yields type checkers for the specified languages that are sound by construction-i.e., they schedule queries so that the answers are stable, and only accept programs that are name-and type-correct according to the declarative language specification. We implement this approach, and evaluate it against specifications of a small module and record language, as well as subsets of Java and Scala.
Journal article
(2018)
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Casper Bach Poulsen, Arjen Rouvoet, Andrew Tolmach, Robbert Krebbers, Eelco Visser
A definitional interpreter defines the semantics of an object language in terms of the (well-known) semantics of a host language, enabling understanding and validation of the semantics through execution. Combining a definitional interpreter with a separate type system requires a separate type safety proof. An alternative approach, at least for pure object languages, is to use a dependently-typed language to encode the object language type system in the definition of the abstract syntax. Using such intrinsically-typed abstract syntax definitions allows the host language type checker to verify automatically that the interpreter satisfies type safety. Does this approach scale to larger and more realistic object languages, and in particular to languages with mutable state and objects?
In this paper, we describe and demonstrate techniques and libraries in Agda that successfully scale up intrinsically-typed definitional interpreters to handle rich object languages with non-trivial binding structures and mutable state. While the resulting interpreters are certainly more complex than the simply-typed lambda-calculus interpreter we start with, we claim that they still meet the goals of being concise, comprehensible, and executable, while guaranteeing type safety for more elaborate object languages. We make the following contributions: (1) A _dependent-passing style_ technique for hiding the weakening of indexed values as they propagate through monadic code. (2) An Agda library for programming with scope graphs and frames, which provides a uniform approach to dealing with name binding in intrinsically-typed interpreters. (3) Case studies of intrinsically-typed definitional interpreters for the simply-typed lambda-calculus with references (STLC+Ref) and for a large subset of Middleweight Java (MJ).
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A definitional interpreter defines the semantics of an object language in terms of the (well-known) semantics of a host language, enabling understanding and validation of the semantics through execution. Combining a definitional interpreter with a separate type system requires a separate type safety proof. An alternative approach, at least for pure object languages, is to use a dependently-typed language to encode the object language type system in the definition of the abstract syntax. Using such intrinsically-typed abstract syntax definitions allows the host language type checker to verify automatically that the interpreter satisfies type safety. Does this approach scale to larger and more realistic object languages, and in particular to languages with mutable state and objects?
In this paper, we describe and demonstrate techniques and libraries in Agda that successfully scale up intrinsically-typed definitional interpreters to handle rich object languages with non-trivial binding structures and mutable state. While the resulting interpreters are certainly more complex than the simply-typed lambda-calculus interpreter we start with, we claim that they still meet the goals of being concise, comprehensible, and executable, while guaranteeing type safety for more elaborate object languages. We make the following contributions: (1) A _dependent-passing style_ technique for hiding the weakening of indexed values as they propagate through monadic code. (2) An Agda library for programming with scope graphs and frames, which provides a uniform approach to dealing with name binding in intrinsically-typed interpreters. (3) Case studies of intrinsically-typed definitional interpreters for the simply-typed lambda-calculus with references (STLC+Ref) and for a large subset of Middleweight Java (MJ).
Scope graphs are a promising generic framework to model the binding structures of programming languages, bridging formalization and implementation, supporting the definition of type checkers and the automation of type safety proofs. However, previous work on scope graphs has been limited to simple, nominal type systems. In this paper, we show that viewing scopes as types enables us to model the internal structure of types in a range of non-simple type systems (including structural records and generic classes) using the generic representation of scopes. Further, we show that relations between such types can be expressed in terms of generalized scope graph queries. We extend scope graphs with scoped relations and queries. We introduce Statix, a new domain-specific meta-language for the specification of static semantics, based on scope graphs and constraints. We evaluate the scopes as types approach and the Statix design in case studies of the simply-typed lambda calculus with records, System F, and Featherweight Generic Java.Scope graphs are a promising generic framework to model the binding structures of programming languages, bridging formalization and implementation, supporting the definition of type checkers and the automation of type safety proofs. However, previous work on scope graphs has been limited to simple, nominal type systems. In this paper, we show that viewing scopes as types enables us to model the internal structure of types in a range of non-simple type systems (including structural records and generic classes) using the generic representation of scopes. Further, we show that relations between such types can be expressed in terms of generalized scope graph queries. We extend scope graphs with scoped relations and queries. We introduce Statix, a new domain-specific meta-language for the specification of static semantics, based on scope graphs and constraints. We evaluate the scopes as types approach and the Statix design in case studies of the simply-typed lambda calculus with records, System F, and Featherweight Generic Java.
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Scope graphs are a promising generic framework to model the binding structures of programming languages, bridging formalization and implementation, supporting the definition of type checkers and the automation of type safety proofs. However, previous work on scope graphs has been limited to simple, nominal type systems. In this paper, we show that viewing scopes as types enables us to model the internal structure of types in a range of non-simple type systems (including structural records and generic classes) using the generic representation of scopes. Further, we show that relations between such types can be expressed in terms of generalized scope graph queries. We extend scope graphs with scoped relations and queries. We introduce Statix, a new domain-specific meta-language for the specification of static semantics, based on scope graphs and constraints. We evaluate the scopes as types approach and the Statix design in case studies of the simply-typed lambda calculus with records, System F, and Featherweight Generic Java.Scope graphs are a promising generic framework to model the binding structures of programming languages, bridging formalization and implementation, supporting the definition of type checkers and the automation of type safety proofs. However, previous work on scope graphs has been limited to simple, nominal type systems. In this paper, we show that viewing scopes as types enables us to model the internal structure of types in a range of non-simple type systems (including structural records and generic classes) using the generic representation of scopes. Further, we show that relations between such types can be expressed in terms of generalized scope graph queries. We extend scope graphs with scoped relations and queries. We introduce Statix, a new domain-specific meta-language for the specification of static semantics, based on scope graphs and constraints. We evaluate the scopes as types approach and the Statix design in case studies of the simply-typed lambda calculus with records, System F, and Featherweight Generic Java.