Developing a Practical Reactive Synthesis Tool: Experience and Lessons Learned

TL;DR

This paper discusses the development and practical application of Termite, a reactive synthesis tool designed for software developers, highlighting lessons learned and barriers to accessibility.

Contribution

It introduces Termite, a reactive synthesis tool with user-friendly features, and shares insights from applying it to real-world software, guiding future research.

Findings

Identified barriers to making reactive synthesis accessible.

Designed key features like an imperative language and debugger.

Shared practical lessons and caveats from real-world use.

Abstract

We summarise our experience developing and using Termite, the first reactive synthesis tool intended for use by software development practitioners. We identify the main barriers to making reactive synthesis accessible to software developers and describe the key features of Termite designed to overcome these barriers, including an imperative C-like specification language, an interactive source-level debugger, and a user-guided code generator. Based on our experience applying Termite to synthesising real-world reactive software, we identify several caveats of the practical use of the reactive synthesis technology. We hope that these findings will help define the agenda for future research on practical reactive synthesis.