Type-driven Development of Concurrent Communicating Systems (JCS '17)

[brianhempel]

Type-driven Development of Concurrent Communicating Systems (JCS '17)
Edwin Brady
https://journals.agh.edu.pl/csci/article/download/1413/1840
LambdaConf Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQO9N0Y8tcM

Modern software systems rely on communication, for example mobile applications communicating with a central server, distributed systems coordinating a telecommunications network, or concurrent systems handling events and processes in a desktop application. However, reasoning about concurrent programs is hard, since we must reason about each process and the order in which communication might happen between processes. In this paper, I describe a type-driven approach to implementing communicating concurrent programs, using the dependently typed programming language Idris. I show how the type system can be used to describe resource access protocols (such as controlling access to a file handle) and verify that programs correctly follow those protocols. Finally, I show how to use the type system to reason about the order of communication between concurrent processes, ensuring that each end of a communication channel follows a defined protocol.