Introduction

The look and feel of the web page is often responsible for its popularity. In the same time, the Web 2.0 hype defined some new technologies and standards, which must be offered in order to gain user’s acceptance. The pre-2.0 communication channels like emails, discussion forums and CMSs has to be extended with RSS feeds, wiki-like collaborative editing, support for micro-blogging (e.G. twitter) and others. In addition, the lessons learned from open-source projects shows the importance of the ability for arbitary users to give feedback about the software, using a simple bugtracking system with open access.

This page aims to deliver all of it and support the new and growing community of TLA+ and PlusCal. In doing so, we started with the popular blogging system and use it as a basic platform, extending it with additional functionality using its modular architecure. Since the authors of the blog posts and static content want to foster the communication with the community, the discussion forum software has been adopted. In order to ease the usage of these two systems, Single-Sign-On has been implemented. Apart from tutorials and discussions, it is of utmost importance to receive direct feedback from the users (like bugs or enhancement proposals). For this purpose, the Bugzilla bugtracking system has been installed.

Static content

Every web page provides some static content. The content of this page is separated in two sections: Learning and Resources. If you are new to TLA+ and PlusCal have a look into those sections to find the basic materials.

Blog

In order to ease the lookup for updated topics, the page has a blog section. It is used for announcements of new content inside of the static part, new releases of software and so on. Please note, that all pages supports the RSS aggregation, but it makes most sense to subscribe the blog.

Discussion Forum

In order to improve the possibility of giving feedback and to foster the discussions about TLA+, PlusCal and the tools, the new Discussion Forum has been installed. The popular system bbPress should be good enogh for this purposes. From now on, you can create an account and discuss with the community. In order to log-in, click on the small red arrow in the left-upper corner of the page. There are also some internal discussion forums, which are visible if you are logged in, and has special permissions. If you think that you miss some of them – let me know.

Wiki Question

It has been proposed several times to install the Wiki-System. Since there is no use case for collaborative editing in wiki, I try to keep the number of systems as low as possible. If there is a real need for the wiki – let me know.

Feedback using Bugzilla

The preparation of the TLA+ Toolbox release is moving forward, so the main feedback tool for bugs and enchancements has been installed. For this purpose, Bugzilla Bug Tracking System will be used. Anyone can register by creating an account and file bugs using the bug-tracking system. In the current stage the Bugzilla account is independent from the forum account, but this will change eventually.

In order to enhance the user experience with the tools and simplify the access to the languages some improvements are being developed in the scope of the project run by Microsoft Research and INRIA. Along with the focus on the proof aspect of TLA+, the development of a complete Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for writing and debugging of specifications has been identified as a project goal. The IDE unifies the editors for specifications and models with already existing TLA+ tools for syntax analyze, PlusCal translation and model checking in one application. It includes the console-based TLA+ Tools and enables the use of their whole functionality via rich graphical user interface.

The IDE is currently being finalized and will be available soon. It will include:

• Simple interface for managing specifications
• Integrated TLA+ specification editor with features like:
  • SANY integration
  • Syntax Highlighting
  • Basic content assist
  • Error marker support
  • and others
• PlusCal Translator integration
• TLC Model Checker integration
  • Simple interface for managing models
  • Rich model editor
  • Extended TLC result display
  • Trace Explorer
  • and others…

Stay tuned for the TLA+ Toolbox release…

In this project, we are working on turning TLA+ into a complete solution for writing, debugging, and proving specifications. More precisely, we are concentrating on the proof aspect:

• refining the proof language
• making a development environment for TLA+ specifications and proofs
• developing and adapting automatic tools for helping to prove TLA+ theorems (Zenon, haRVey-SAT)
• translating TLA+ proofs into a machine-checkable format for verification by an independent checker (Isabelle)

We will validate and enhance our tools by finding examples of real-world projects where formal specifications bring real improvements over other methodologies. Feedback from these examples will help us improve the proof language and the tools and develop methods and “design patterns” for using TLA+.

Team and former Members

• Leslie Lamport (Microsoft Research)
• Stephan Merz (LORIA)
• Damien Doligez (INRIA)
• Daniel Ricketts (INRIA)
• Denis Cousineau (MSR-INRIA)
• Kaustuv Chaudhuri (MSR-INRIA)
• Simon Zambrovski (Microsoft Research)

Status

Project is in progress…

Project Homepage

http://www.msr-inria.inria.fr/Projects/tools-for-formal-specs/

The main purpose of this page is to help the community around the TLA+ and PlusCal projects communicate and grow. Thus, we start with a small blog and will integrate other technologies as soon as they are required.

Have a lot of fun!