Specification structures and propositions-as-types for concurrency

Abstract

Many different notions of property of interest and methods of verifying such properties arise naturally in programming. A general framework of Specification Structures is presented for combining different notions and methods in a coherent fashion. This is then applied to concurrency in the setting of Interaction Categories. As an example, we present a type system for concurrent processes strong enough to guarantee deadlock-freedom, and expressive enough to allow the treatment of some standard examples from the literature. This is illustrated using the classic Dining Philosophers problem.