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Section: New Software and Platforms
Compcert
The CompCert formally-verified C compiler
Keywords: Compilers - Formal methods - Deductive program verification - C - Coq
Functional Description: CompCert is a compiler for the C programming language. Its intended use is the compilation of life-critical and mission-critical software written in C and meeting high levels of assurance. It accepts most of the ISO C 99 language, with some exceptions and a few extensions. It produces machine code for the ARM, PowerPC, RISC-V, and x86 architectures. What sets CompCert C apart from any other production compiler, is that it is formally verified to be exempt from miscompilation issues, using machine-assisted mathematical proofs (the Coq proof assistant). In other words, the executable code it produces is proved to behave exactly as specified by the semantics of the source C program. This level of confidence in the correctness of the compilation process is unprecedented and contributes to meeting the highest levels of software assurance. In particular, using the CompCert C compiler is a natural complement to applying formal verification techniques (static analysis, program proof, model checking) at the source code level: the correctness proof of CompCert C guarantees that all safety properties verified on the source code automatically hold as well for the generated executable.
Release Functional Description: Novelties include a formally-verified type checker for CompCert C, a more careful modeling of pointer comparisons against the null pointer, algorithmic improvements in the handling of deeply nested struct and union types, much better ABI compatibility for passing composite values, support for GCC-style extended inline asm, and more complete generation of DWARF debugging information (contributed by AbsInt).