Meta-F*: Proof automation with SMT, Tactics, and Metaprograms

Guido Martínez (1, 2) , Danel Ahman (2, 3) , Victor Dumitrescu (4) , Nick Giannarakis (5) , Chris Hawblitzel (6) , Cătălin Hriţcu (2) , Monal Narasimhamurthy (7) , Zoe Paraskevopoulou (5) , Clément Pit-Claudel (8) , Jonathan Protzenko (6) , Tahina Ramananandro (6) , Aseem Rastogi (6) , Nikhil Swamy (6)

1 Universidad Nacional de Rosario [Santa Fe]
2 PROSECCO - Programming securely with cryptography
3 University of Ljubljana - Department of Mathematics
4 MSR - INRIA - Microsoft Research - Inria Joint Centre
5 Princeton University
6 Microsoft Research
7 University of Colorado [Boulder]
8 MIT - Massachusetts Institute of Technology

We introduce Meta-F⋆, a tactics and metaprogramming framework for the F⋆ program verifier. The main novelty of Meta-F⋆ is allowing the use of tactics and metaprogramming to discharge assertions not solvable by SMT, or to just simplify them into well-behaved SMT fragments. Plus, Meta-F⋆ can be used to generate verified code automatically. Meta-F⋆ is implemented as an F⋆ effect, which, given the powerful effect system of F⋆, heavily increases code reuse and even enables the lightweight verification of metaprograms. Metaprograms can be either interpreted, or compiled to efficient native code that can be dynamically loaded into the F⋆ type-checker and can interoperate with interpreted code. Evaluation on realistic case studies shows that Meta-F⋆ provides substantial gains in proof development, efficiency, and robustness.

Mots clés: Tactics; Metaprogramming; Program verification; Verification conditions; SMT solvers; Proof assistants

Domaines: Langage de programmation [cs.PL]

Guido Martínez, Danel Ahman, Victor Dumitrescu, Nick Giannarakis, Chris Hawblitzel, et al.. Meta-F*: Proof automation with SMT, Tactics, and Metaprograms. ESOP'19 - European Symposium on Programming, Apr 2019, Prague, Czech Republic. ⟨10.1007/978-3-030-17184-1_2⟩. ⟨hal-01995376⟩