Prototype: Polymorphic Type Inference for Dynamic Languages

The web version of this prototype can be tested here (or there for a more experimental version).

Using the docker image

For convenience, a Dockerfile is provided. Assuming the current directory contains the Dockerfile, the image can be built with:

docker build -t poly --rm .

Building the image takes about 10 minutes (depending on your connection speed and machine configuration). The resulting image takes about 2.5GB. Once the image is built, it is recommended to launch the container as such:

docker run --rm -p 9090:9090 --name poly_container poly

This exposes the Web version of the prototype on http://localhost:9090. The native version can be used from within the container. To start a shell inside the running container, do:

docker exec -ti poly_container bash

You can then follow the instructions in the Running the prototype section below. Within the container, the text editors nano, vim and emacs are available.

Building the native version

First, clone and open this repository by doing

git clone git@github.com:E-Sh4rk/Prototype.git
cd Prototype/src

The easiest way to build the native version is through opam, the OCaml Package Manager. This prototype has been tested on OCaml 4.14.1, that can be installed, together with the dependencies, by doing the following (answer 'y' when asked):

opam switch create dynlang_tc 4.14.1
eval $(opam env --switch=dynlang_tc)
make deps

Then, the prototype can be built using

make build

Running the prototype

Language syntax

The syntax of the language is described in the online help.

Native version

Once compiled, the prototype can be executed from the src directory with

make run

or alternatively

dune exec -- ./main/prototype.exe [file]

If no file is given, the file test.ml from the current path is used.

Javascript version (web editor)

You will need npm to install the dependencies of the Javascript version. First, build the native version, then:

make libjs
cd ../webeditor
npm ci

Then either serve the whole content of the ./webeditor/ directory through a Web server or open the file ./webeditor/index.html directly from a browser (warning : the later will not allow you to load the examples nor benefit from web-workers due to security policies).

Hacking the sources

The main concepts of the paper Polymorphic Type Inference for Dynamic Languages are implemented in the src/system directory, where one can find the implementation of MSC-forms, the algorithmic typechecking system, and the reconstruction and reconstruction auxiliary type inference systems.

This software is distributed under the terms contained in the LICENSE file.