Verifying Single and Multi-mutator Garbage Collectors with Owicki-Gries in Isabelle/HOL

Nieto, Leonor Prensa; Esparza, Javier

doi:10.1007/3-540-44612-5_57

“…There have been prior verifications of incremental algorithms (e.g. [8,11,14,17]) and concurrent ones (e.g. [3,5,6,16]), but we believe that this paper is the first to report on a successful verification of a generational garbage collector.…”

Section: Discussion Of Related Workmentioning

confidence: 96%

A Verified Generational Garbage Collector for CakeML

Ericsson

¹

,

Myreen

²

,

Pohjola

³

2018

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This paper presents the verification of a generational copying garbage collector for the CakeML runtime system. The proof is split into an algorithm proof and an implementation proof. The algorithm proof follows the structure of the informal intuition for the generational collector's correctness, namely, a partial collection cycle in a generational collector is the same as running a full collection on part of the heap, if one views pointers to old data as non-pointers. We present a pragmatic way of dealing with ML-style mutable state, such as references and arrays, in the proofs. The development has been fully integrated into the in-logic bootstrapped CakeML compiler, which now includes command-line arguments that allow configuration of the generational collector. All proofs were carried out in the HOL4 theorem prover.

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“…There have been prior verifications of incremental algorithms (e.g. [6,9,12,14]) and concurrent ones (e.g. [3][4][5]13]), but we believe that this paper is the first to report on a successful verification of a generational garbage collector.…”

Section: Discussion Of Related Workmentioning

confidence: 98%

A Verified Generational Garbage Collector for CakeML

Ericsson

¹

,

Myreen

²

,

Pohjola

³

2017

Interactive Theorem Proving

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This paper presents the verification of a generational copying garbage collector for the CakeML runtime system. The proof is split into an algorithm proof and an implementation proof. The algorithm proof follows the structure of the informal intuition for the generational collector's correctness, namely, a partial collection cycle in a generational collector is the same as running a full collection on part of the heap, if one views pointers to old data as non-pointers. We present a pragmatic way of dealing with ML-style mutable state, such as references and arrays, in the proofs. The development has been fully integrated into the in-logic bootstrapped CakeML compiler, which now includes command-line arguments that allow configuration of the generational collector. All proofs were carried out in the HOL4 theorem prover.

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“…In [TSBR08], a copying collector with no concurrency is verified using separation logic. An Owicki-Gries proof of Ben-Ari's algorithm is given in [NE00]; while this examines multiple mutators, the method results in a very large number of POs. The proof of Ben-Ari's algorithm in [vdS87], also using Owicki-Gries, reasons directly at the code level without using abstraction.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%