Explicit stabilisation for modular rely-guarantee reasoning

  • Authors:
  • John Wickerson;Mike Dodds;Matthew Parkinson

  • Affiliations:
  • University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory;University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory;University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory

  • Venue:
  • ESOP'10 Proceedings of the 19th European conference on Programming Languages and Systems
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

We propose a new formalisation of stability for Rely-Guarantee, in which an assertion's stability is encoded into its syntactic form. This allows two advances in modular reasoning. Firstly, it enables Rely-Guarantee, for the first time, to verify concurrent libraries independently of their clients' environments. Secondly, in a sequential setting, it allows a module's internal interference to be hidden while verifying its clients. We demonstrate our approach by verifying, using RGSep, the Version 7 Unix memory manager, uncovering a twenty-year-old bug in the process.