Kontroli

Kontroli (Esperanto for verify) is an alternative implementation of the logical framework Dedukti, concentrating on the verification of proofs.

Kontroli's use case is to verify proofs generated by automated reasoning tools, such as proof assistants and automated theorem provers. It serves to verify the output of Dedukti by providing a "second opinion" and to make it easier for users to understand and learn from the implementation. It is also a testbed for parallelising type checking.

Usage

Kontroli requires at least Rust 1.40. On a recent Ubuntu system, this can be installed via:

sudo apt install rustc

For other systems, instructions are available at https://rustup.rs/.

To run Kontroli on output generated from Isabelle/Pure:

cargo run -p kocheck --release examples/pure.dk

To install Kontroli:

cargo install --path kocheck

Kontroli provides a command-line program, kocheck, and a library. The latter means that you can use Kontroli as part of your own applications. Given that the Kontroli library does not rely on Rust's standard library, you could use it also in environments such as web pages, offering type checking as a service.

Goals

Kontroli tries to be the following:

Small: write as little code as possible ...
Correct: ... because the code you do not write, contains no bugs
Efficient: be at least as fast as Dedukti in main use case
Compatible: stick to Dedukti's syntax/semantics as much as possible
Conservative: use established and well-tested techniques

Differences

There are a few differences with respect to Dedukti:

Kontroli has a module system allowing for nested modules.
Kontroli does not support higher-order rewrite rules, as they would make the whole program considerably more complex, thus contradicting the idea of a small type checker.
Kontroli does not try to assure the type-safety of rewrite rules. As a consequence, neither bracket patterns nor type annotations in rewrite rules are supported. However, using Kontroli's API, it should be possible to implement type checkers that assure type-safety.
Kontroli does not use decision trees for rewriting.
Kontroli does not have any commands like #EVAL or #ASSERT, which are particularly used in Dedukti tests. Instead, tests in the code base are preferred.

Syntax

Kontroli implements a subset of Dedukti's syntax. Examples of the syntax can be seen in examples/nat.dk or examples/pure.dk.

Development

A few useful commands for developing Kontroli: