Coq 8.5

Version 8.5 of Coq will remain as one of the most important versions of the history of Coq. It includes five big achievements affecting various components of the system: a new proof engine supporting multi-goal and deep backtracking by Arnaud Spiwack; a new asynchronous evaluation engine supporting efficient parallel development of interactive documents, parallel evaluation of tactics, modular compilation of files by Enrico Tassi; full universe polymorphism by Matthieu Sozeau; a new notion of primitive projections highlighting the negatively polarised view at record types by Matthieu Sozeau; a new evaluation machine by Maxime Dénès which works by compiling to OCaml.

The year 2015 was also a year of thinking on new ways to popularise Coq and further enhance the interaction between users and developers. In particular, a first Coq Coding Sprint gathered about 30 participants around about 10 developers.

EPIT 2015

This year, the French Spring School in Theoretical Computer Science (EPIT) was organised by Yann Régis-Gianas, Pierre Letouzey, Matthieu Sozeau and Pierre-Marie Pédrot in Fréjus (France). This CNRS “école thématique” was dedicated to the mechanisation of proofs of programs and of mathematical theorems in Coq. It was attended by 50 participants, coming from different research communities. Besides the courses introducing the basics of Coq and proof development in Coq, substantial efforts of formalisation in various areas such as formal language theory, number theory, or combinatorics were presented by their authors, and the attendants were encouraged to discuss their own formalisation projects with the Coq developers. The school has been sponsorised by the CNRS, the FIFP, the ADT Coq and the ANR Paral-ITP. The feedback from the participants was very positive.