Linking the Meaning of Programs to What the Compiler Can Verify

Abstract

Abstract. We formulate some research and development challenges that relate what a verifying compiler can verify to the definition and analysis of the application-content of programs, where the analysis comprises both experimental validation and mathematical verification. We also point to a practical framework to deal with theses challenges, namely the Abstract State Machines (ASM) method for high-level system design and analysis. We explain how it allows one to bridge the gap between informal requirements and detailed code by combining application-centric experimentally validatable system modeling with mathematically verifiable refinements of abstract models to compiler-verifiable code.This paper is a position paper, triggered by the formulation of the program verifier challenge in [46]. By its definition, Hoare's challenge is focussed on the correctness of programs: software representations of computer-based systems, tobe-compiled by a verifying compiler. As a consequence, "the criterion of correctness is specified by types, assertions and other redundant annotations associated with the code of the program", where "the compiler will work in combination with other program development and testing tools, to achieve any desired degree of confidence in the structural soundness of the system and the total correctness of its more critical components." [46] Compilable code however is the result of two program development activities, which have to be checked too:-turning the requirements into ground models, accurate "blueprints" of the to-be-implemented piece of "real world", which define the application-centric meaning of programs in an abstract and precise form, prior to coding, -linking ground models to compilable code by a series of refinements, which introduce step by step the details resulting from the design decisions for the implementation.We propose to broaden the program verifier challenge by relating the verification of the correctness for compilable programs to the experimental validation of the application-domain-based semantical correctness for ground models and to the mathematical verification of their refinements to compilable code, using Abstract State Machine (ASM) ground models [11] (Sect. 1) and ASM refinements [12] (Sect. 2). This leads us to formulate a broadening of Hoare's challenge, together with a series of milestones towards the overall goal (Sect. 4).

Construction and analysis of ground models and their refinements as a foundation for validating computer-based systems

“…We argue in this paper, which is a reelaboration of the position paper [17], that a practically relevant verified software project has to be grounded-in-reality by relating the verification of the correctness of compilable programs to the -experimental validation of the application-domain-based semantical correctness for ground models (Sect. 2) and to the -mathematical verification of their refinements to compilable code (Sect.…”