How to specify a compiler
Andrew W. Appel · Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2014
In Part III we described program verification for C: tools and techniques to demonstrate that C programs satisfy correctness properties. What we ultimately want is the correctness of a compiled machine language binary image, running on some target hardware platform. We will use a correct compiler that turns source-level programs satisfying correctness properties into machine-level programs satisfying those same properties. But defining formally the interface between a compiler correctness proof and a program logic has proven to be fraught with difficulties. Resolving these difficulties is still the object of ongoing research. Here we will explore some of the issues that have arisen and report on the current state of the integration effort. T he two issues that have caused the most headaches revolve around understanding and specifying how compiled programs interact with their environment. First, how should we reason about the execution environment when it may behave in unpredictable ways at runtime? In other words, how do we reason about program nondeterminism? Second, how do we specify correctness for programs that exhibit shared memory interactions? The first question regarding nondeterminism is treated in detail in Dockins's dissertation [38]. Dockins develops a general theory of refinements for nondeterministic programs based on bisimulation methods. This theory gracefully handles the case where the execution environment is nondeterministic, and it has the critical feature that it allows programs to become more defined as they are compiled.