Abstract
Our language Cogent simplifies verification of systems software using a certifying compiler, which produces a proof that the generated C code is a refinement of the original Cogent program. Despite the fact that Cogent itself contains a number of refinement layers, the semantic gap between even the lowest level of Cogent semantics and the generated C code remains large.
In this paper we close this gap with an automated refinement framework which validates the compiler’s code generation phase. This framework makes use of existing C verification tools and introduces a new technique to relate the type systems of Cogent and C.
NICTA is funded by the Australian Government through the Department of Communications and the Australian Research Council through the ICT Centre of Excellence Program.
This material is based on research sponsored by Air Force Research Laboratory and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) under agreement number FA8750-12-9-0179. The U.S. Government is authorised to reproduce and distribute reprints for Governmental purposes notwithstanding any copyright notation thereon. The views and conclusions contained herein are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies or endorsements, either expressed or implied, of Air Force Research Laboratory, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or the U.S. Government.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Mind the potential logical gap between our C parser’s C semantics [13] and that of CompCert.
- 2.
Cogent’s occasionally larger stack frames lead to \(\mathtt {memcpy()}\) calls that, while conceptually straightforward, the translation validator does not yet cover.
- 3.
Although \(\mathbf {corres} \) technically permits the monadic code to return no results, the code that we generate will additionally always return \( results \ne \emptyset \) as long as it has not \( failed \).
References
Cogent material (2016). https://github.com/NICTA/cogent/tree/itp_2016
Amani, S., Hixon, A., Chen, Z., Rizkallah, C., Chubb, P., O’Connor, L., Beeren, J., Nagashima, Y., Lim, J., Sewell, T., Tuong, J., Keller, G., Murray, T., Klein, G., Heiser, G.: Cogent: Verifying high-assurance file system implementations. In: ASPLOS, pp. 175–188, April 2016
Cock, D., Klein, G., Sewell, T.: Secure microkernels, state monads and scalable refinement. In: Mohamed, O.A., Muñoz, C., Tahar, S. (eds.) TPHOLs 2008. LNCS, vol. 5170, pp. 167–182. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)
Greenaway, D., Lim, J., Andronick, J., Klein, G.: Don’t sweat the small stuff: formal verification of C code without the pain. In: PLDI, pp. 429–439 (June 2014)
Klein, G., Elphinstone, K., Heiser, G., Andronick, J., Cock, D., Derrin, P., Elkaduwe, D., Engelhardt, K., Kolanski, R., Norrish, M., Sewell, T., Tuch, H., Winwood, S.: seL4: Formal verification of an OS kernel. In: SOSP, pp. 207–220 (October 2009)
Kumar, R., Myreen, M., Norrish, M., Owens, S.: CakeML: a verified implementation of ML. In: POPL, pp. 179–191, January 2014
Leroy, X.: Formal verification of a realistic compiler. CACM 52(7), 107–115 (2009)
Nipkow, T., Paulson, L.C., Wenzel, M. (eds.): Isabelle/HOL — A Proof Assistant for Higher-Order Logic. LNCS, vol. 2283. Springer, Heidelberg (2002)
O’Connor, L., Chen, Z., Rizkallah, C., Amani, S., Lim, J., Murray, T., Nagashima, Y., Sewell, T., Klein, G.: Refinement through restraint: bringing down the cost of verification. In: ICFP (to appear, 2016)
Sabry, A., Felleisen, M.: Reasoning about programs in continuation-passing style. SIGPLAN Lisp Pointers V(1), 288–298 (January 1992)
Schirmer, N.: Verification of Sequential Imperative Programs in Isabelle/HOL. Ph.D. thesis, Technische Universität München (2006)
Sewell, T., Myreen, M., Klein, G.: Translation validation for a verified OS kernel. In: PLDI, pp. 471–481 (June 2013)
Tuch, H., Klein, G., Norrish, M.: Types, bytes, and separation logic. In: POPL, pp. 97–108 (January 2007)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this paper
Cite this paper
Rizkallah, C. et al. (2016). A Framework for the Automatic Formal Verification of Refinement from Cogent to C. In: Blanchette, J., Merz, S. (eds) Interactive Theorem Proving. ITP 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9807. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43144-4_20
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43144-4_20
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-43143-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-43144-4
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)