A verified VCGen based on dynamic logic: An exercise in meta-verification with Why3

With the incresasing importance of program verification, an issue that has been receiving more attention is the certification of verification tools, addressing the vernacular question: “Who verifies the verifier?”. In this paper we approach this meta-verification problem by focusing on a fundamental component of program verifiers: the “Verification Conditions Generator” (VCGen), responsible for producing a set of proof obligations from a program and a specification. The semantic foundations of VCGens lie in program logics, such as Hoare logic, Dynamic logic, or Separation logic, and related predicate transformers.

Dynamic logic is the basis of the KeY system, one of the foremost deductive verifiers, whose logic makes use of the notion of update, which is quite intricate to formalize. In this paper we derive systematically, based on a KeY-style dynamic logic, a correct-by-construction VCGen for a toy programming language. Our workflow covers the entire process, from the logic to the VCGen. It is implemented in the Why3 tool, which is itself a program verifier. We prove the soundness and (an appropriate notion of) completeness of the logic, then define a VCGen for our language and establish its soundness.

Dynamic logic is one of a variety of research topics that our dear friend and colleague Luís Soares Barbosa has, over the years, initiated and promoted at the University of Minho. It is a pleasure for us to dedicate this work to him on the occasion of his 60th birthday.