One of the central claims of fame of the Coq proof assistant is extraction, i.e., the ability to obtain efficient programs in industrial programming languages such as OCaml, Haskell, or Scheme from programs written in Coq’s expressive dependent type theory. Extraction is of great practical usefulness, used crucially e.g., in the CompCert project. However, for such executables obtained by extraction, the extraction process is part of the trusted code base (TCB), as are Coq’s kernel and the compiler used to compile the extracted code. The extraction process contains intricate semantic transformation of programs that rely on subtle operational features of both the source and target language. Its code has also evolved since the last theoretical exposition in the seminal PhD thesis of Pierre Letouzey. Furthermore, while the exact correctness statements for the execution of extracted code are described clearly in academic literature, the interoperability with unverified code has never been investigated formally, and yet is used in virtually every project relying on extraction. In this paper, we describe the development of a novel extraction pipeline from Coq to OCaml, implemented and verified in Coq itself, with a clear correctness theorem and guarantees for safe interoperability. We build our work on the MetaCoq project, which aims at decreasing the TCB of Coq’s kernel by re-implementing it in Coq itself and proving it correct w.r.t. a formal specification of Coq’s type theory in Coq. Since OCaml does not have a formal specification, we make use of the Malfunction project specifying the semantics of the intermediate language of the OCaml compiler. Our work fills some gaps in the literature and highlights important differences between the operational semantics of Coq programs and their extraction. In particular, we focus on the guarantees that can be provided for interoperability with unverified code, and prove that extracted programs of first-order data type are correct and can safely interoperate, whereas for higher-order programs already simple interoperations can lead to incorrect behaviour and even outright segfaults.

In order to avoid well-known paradoxes associated with self-referential definitions, higher-order dependent type theories stratify the theory using a countably infinite hierarchy of universes (also known as sorts), ${\text{Type}}_0:{\text{Type}}_1:\dots$. Such type systems are called cumulative if for any type A we have that $𝐴:{\text{Type}}_{𝑖}$ implies $𝐴:{\text{Type}}_{𝑖+1}$. The Predicative Calculus of Inductive Constructions (pCIC) which forms the basis of the Coq proof assistant, is one such system. In this paper we present the Predicative Calculus of Cumulative Inductive Constructions (pCuIC) which extends the cumulativity relation to inductive types. We discuss cumulative inductive types as present in Coq 8.7 and their application to formalization and definitional translations.