Towards Gradual Checking of Reference Capabilities

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel approach called gradual reference capabilities that combines reference capability type qualifiers with gradual typing to improve concurrency safety in programming languages.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of gradual reference capabilities, allowing incremental adoption of reference capabilities in existing languages, blending static and dynamic checks.

Findings

Conceptual framework for gradual reference capabilities

Potential for more flexible concurrency safety checks

Foundation for future implementation and evaluation

Abstract

Concurrent and parallel programming is difficult due to the presence of memory side-effects, which may introduce data races. Type qualifiers, such as reference capabilities, can remove data races by restricting sharing of mutable data. Unfortunately, reference capability languages are an all-in or nothing game, i.e., all the types must be annotated with reference capabilities. In this work in progress, we propose to mix the ideas from the reference capability literature with gradual typing, leading to gradual reference capabilities.