Thursday 16 February 2023 Thursday 2 March 2023, 14:00, room 1Z56: Retrofitting OCaml modules: An Fω-inspired approach for a modern module system, Clément Blaudeau (Cambium, Inria Paris).

ML modules offer large-scale notions of composition and modularity. Provided as an additional layer on top of the core language, they have proven both vital to the working OCaml and SML programmers, and inspiring to other use-cases and languages. Unfortunately, their meta-theory remains difficult to comprehend, and more recent extensions (abstract signatures, module aliases) lack a complete formalization. Building on a previous translation from ML modules to Fω, we propose a new comprehensive description of a significant subset of OCaml modules, including both applicative and generative functors and transparent ascription -- a useful new feature. By exploring the translations both to and from Fω, we provide a complete description of the signature avoidance issue, as well as insights on the limitations and benefits of the path-based approach of OCaml type-sharing.