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CompCertS: A Memory-Aware Verified C Compiler Using a Pointer as Integer Semantics

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Abstract

The CompCert C compiler provides the formal guarantee that the observable behaviour of the compiled code improves on the observable behaviour of the source code. In this paper, we present a formally verified C compiler, CompCertS, which is essentially the CompCert compiler, albeit with a stronger formal guarantee: it gives a semantics to more programs and ensures that the memory consumption is preserved by the compiler. CompCertS is based on an enhanced memory model where, unlike CompCert but like Gcc, the binary representation of pointers can be manipulated much like integers and where, unlike CompCert, allocation may fail if no memory is available. The whole proof of CompCertS is a significant proof-effort and we highlight the crux of the novel proofs of 12 passes of the back-end and a challenging proof of an essential optimising pass of the front-end.

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Notes

  1. http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/wilke-pierre/jar18/doc/html/../index.html

  2. http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/wilke-pierre/jar18/doc/html/NormaliseSpec.html#compat

  3. \(\lfloor \cdot \rfloor \) denotes the option type. We write \(\lfloor v \rfloor \) for Some(v) and \(\emptyset \) for None.

  4. http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/wilke-pierre/jar18/doc/html/Memory.html#Mem.norm_inject

  5. http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/wilke-pierre/jar18/doc/html/InjectWellBehaved.html#inject_well_behaved

  6. http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/wilke-pierre/jar18/doc/html/InjectWellBehaved.html#forget_compat

  7. http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/wilke-pierre/jar18/doc/html/InjectWellBehaved.html#forget_norm

  8. See https://github.com/AbsInt/CompCert/blob/a968152051941a0fc50a86c3fc15e90e22ed7c47/backend/ValueDomain.v#L707

  9. http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/wilke-pierre/jar18/doc/html/ExprEval.html#depends_on_blocks

  10. http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/wilke-pierre/jar18/doc/html/ValueDomain.html#epmatch

  11. http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/wilke-pierre/jar18/doc/html/ValueDomain.html#epmatch_binop_lub

  12. http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/wilke-pierre/jar18/doc/html/SelectOp.html#sub

  13. http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/wilke-pierre/jar18/doc/html/RTL.html#exec_function_internal

  14. http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/wilke-pierre/jar18/doc/html/RTL.html#exec_Ireturn

  15. http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/wilke-pierre/jar18/doc/html/MemReserve.html#reserve_boxes

  16. http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/wilke-pierre/jar18/doc/html/MemReserve.html#release_boxes

  17. http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/wilke-pierre/jar18/doc/html/Memory.html#Mem.wfm_alloc_ok

  18. http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/wilke-pierre/jar18/doc/html/Compiler.html#transf_c_program_correct

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Acknowledgements

This work has been partially funded by the ANR Project AnaStaSec ANR-14-CE28-0014, NSF Grant 1521523 and DARPA Grant FA8750-12-2-0293.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Inria, Univ Rennes, CNRS, IRISA, Rennes, France

    Frédéric Besson & Sandrine Blazy

  2. Yale University, New Haven, USA

    Pierre Wilke

Authors
  1. Frédéric Besson
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  2. Sandrine Blazy
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  3. Pierre Wilke
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Correspondence to Pierre Wilke.

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Besson, F., Blazy, S. & Wilke, P. CompCertS: A Memory-Aware Verified C Compiler Using a Pointer as Integer Semantics. J Autom Reasoning 63, 369–392 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10817-018-9496-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10817-018-9496-y

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