Section: Research Program

Interface with formal methods

Formal methods refer collectively to the mathematical specification of software or hardware systems and to the verification of these systems against these specifications using computer assistance: model checkers, theorem provers, program analyzers, etc. Despite their costs, formal methods are gaining acceptance in the critical software industry, as they are the only way to reach the required levels of software assurance.

In contrast with several other Inria projects, our research objectives are not fully centered around formal methods. However, our research intersects formal methods in the following two areas, mostly related to program proofs using proof assistants and theorem provers.

Software-proof codesign

The current industrial practice is to write programs first, then formally verify them later, often at huge costs. In contrast, we advocate a codesign approach where the program and its proof of correctness are developed in interaction, and are interested in developing ways and means to facilitate this approach. One possibility that we currently investigate is to extend functional programming languages such as Caml with the ability to state logical invariants over data structures and pre- and post-conditions over functions, and interface with automatic or interactive provers to verify that these specifications are satisfied. Another approach that we practice is to start with a proof assistant such as Coq and improve its capabilities for programming directly within Coq.

Mechanized specifications and proofs for programming languages components

We emphasize mathematical specifications and proofs of correctness for key language components such as semantics, type systems, type inference algorithms, compilers and static analyzers. These components are getting so large that machine assistance becomes necessary to conduct these mathematical investigations. We have already mentioned using proof assistants to verify compiler correctness. We are also interested in using them to specify and reason about semantics and type systems. These efforts are part of a more general research topic that is gaining importance: the formal verification of the tools that participate in the construction and certification of high-assurance software.