The Cristal project is concerned with different formalisms of static typing for programming languages, and their use in the design and implementation of robust and efficient tools for typed programming.
Static typing of programming languages imposes that programs satisfy some properties. The goal of our project is to take advantage of these properties in the research for efficient compilation and in the design of language extensions and programming environments. We are also interested in the links and interactions between proof systems for programs and programming environments. Our research stands at the borderline between type theory, design and implementation of programming languages and programming by itself.
Caml and Caml Light, two implementations of a typed and powerful functional programming language belonging to the ML family, developed in our project, are used as context of study as well as programming tools and test bed for the tools that we are developing.
We have scientific connections with other laboratories where related work is being achieved. In France, with the Computer Science Laboratory (LIX) of École Polytechnique, the French Telecommunications Research Center (CNET, Lannion), the Computer Science Laboratory of École Normale Supérieure (LIENS, in Paris), and LAAS in Toulouse. The Cristal Project is member of the CNRS Research Group on Programming (GDR). Our main international connections are with AT&T Bell Laboratories (Murray-Hill, USA), DEC-SRC (Palo-Alto, USA), Carnegie-Mellon University (Pittsburgh, USA) and the Asian Institute of Technology (Bangkok, Thailand).