Towards a Dynabook for verified VM construction

Abstract

We present Smalltalk-25, a scientific Programm of research towards the synthesis of Smalltalk VMs by formal methods. We approach this through a Dynabook-style implementation of Hilbert’s “manipulating proofs as mathematical objects”. We begin by implementing an automated-reasoning engine based on refinement types. Having that foundation laid, we build a program logics for a simple “model” language; a framework for reasoning about a real intermediate language by translating into the model language; an ahead-of-time bootstrapper; and a framework for debugging thus-constructed VMs.

Our Programm is an ongoing research effort; this paper provides a report of its current status. Every part of our system is implemented in Smalltalk and available from GitHub under the MIT license.