FLOC 2018: FEDERATED LOGIC CONFERENCE 2018
Towards Certified Meta-Programming with Typed Template-Coq

Authors: Abhishek Anand, Simon Boulier, Cyril Cohen, Matthieu Sozeau and Nicolas Tabareau

Paper Information

Title:Towards Certified Meta-Programming with Typed Template-Coq
Authors:Abhishek Anand, Simon Boulier, Cyril Cohen, Matthieu Sozeau and Nicolas Tabareau
Proceedings:ITP Papers
Editors: Jeremy Avigad and Assia Mahboubi
Keywords:Coq, meta-programming, certified software
Abstract:

ABSTRACT. Template-Coq is a plugin for Coq, originally implemented by Malecha, which provides a reifier for Coq terms and global declarations, as represented in the Coq kernel, as well as a denotation command. Initially, it was developed for the purpose of writing functions on Coq’s AST in Gallina. Recently, it was used in the CertiCoq certified compiler project, as its front-end language, to derive parametricity properties, and to extract Coq terms to a CBV λ-calculus. However, the syntax lacked semantics, be it typing semantics or operational semantics, which should reflect, as formal specifications in Coq, the semantics of Coq’s type theory itself. The tool was also rather bare bones, providing only rudimentary quoting and unquoting commands. We generalize it to handle the entire Calculus of Inductive Constructions, as implemented by Coq, including the kernel’s declaration structures for definitions and inductives, and implement a monad for general manipulation of Coq’s logical environment. We demonstrate how this setup allows the definition of many kinds of general purpose plugins, whose correctness can be readily proved in the system itself, and that can be run efficiently after extraction. We give a few examples of implemented plugins, including a parametricity translation. We also advocate the use of Template-Coq as a foundation for higher-level tools.

Pages:18
Talk:Jul 10 16:30 (Session 58B)
Paper: