SerAPI: Machine-Friendly, Data-Centric Serialization for COQ

Abstract

We present SerAPI, a library and protocol for machine-friendly communication with the COQ proof assistant. SerAPI is implemented using Ocaml's PPX pre-processing technology, and it is specifically targeted to reduce implementation burden for tools such as Integrated Development Environments or code analyzers. SerAPI tries to address common problems that tools interacting with COQ face, providing a uniform and data-centric way to access term representations, proof state, and an extended protocol for document building. SerAPI is work in progress but fully functional. It has been adopted by the jsCoq and PeaCoq Integrated Development Environments , and supports running inside a web browser instance. For the near future, we are focused on extending the document protocol and providing advanced display abilities to clients.