Multiparty Session Programming with Global Protocol Combinators

Abstract

Multiparty Session Types (MPST) is a typing discipline for communication protocols. It ensures the absence of communication errors and deadlocks for well-typed communicating processes. The state-of-the-art implementations of the MPST theory rely on (1) runtime linearity checks to ensure correct usage of communication channels and (2) external domain-specific languages for specifying and verifying multiparty protocols. To overcome these limitations, we propose a library for programming with global combinators -- a set of functions for writing and verifying multiparty protocols in OCaml. Local behaviours for all processes in a protocol are inferred at once from a global combinator. We formalise global combinators and prove a sound realisability of global combinators -- a well-typed global combinator derives a set of local types, by which typed endpoint programs can ensure type and communication safety. Our approach enables fully-static verification and implementation of the whole protocol, from the protocol specification to the process implementations, to happen in the same language. We compare our implementation to untyped and continuation-passing style implementations, and demonstrate its expressiveness by implementing a plethora of protocols. We show our library can interoperate with existing libraries and services, implementing DNS (Domain Name Service) protocol and the OAuth (Open Authentication) protocol.