Abstract
Compositional proof systems for shared variable concurrent programs can be devised by including the interference information in the specifications. The formalism falls into a category calledrely-guarantee (orassumption-commitment), in which a specification is explicitly (syntactically) split into two corresponding parts. This paper summarises existing work on the rely-guarantee method and gives a systematic presentation. A proof system for partial correctness is given first, thereafter it is demonstrated how the relevant rules can be adapted to verify deadlock freedom and convergence. Soundness and completeness, of which the completeness proof is new, are studied with respect to an operational model. We observe that the rely-guarantee method is in a sense a reformulation of the classical non-compositional Owicki & Gries method, and we discuss throughout the paper the connection between these two methods.
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The research was partially supported by Esprit-BRA project 6021 (REACT).
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Xu, Q., de Roever, W.P. & He, J. The rely-guarantee method for verifying shared variable concurrent programs. Formal Aspects of Computing 9, 149–174 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01211617
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01211617