Inference Systems with Corules for Combined Safety and Liveness Properties of Binary Session Types

Many properties of communication protocols combine safety and liveness aspects. Characterizing such combined properties by means of a single inference system is difficult because of the fundamentally different techniques (coinduction and induction, respectively) usually involved in defining and proving them. In this paper we show that Generalized Inference Systems allow for simple and insightful characterizations of (at least some of) these combined inductive/coinductive properties of binary session types. In particular, we illustrate the role of corules in characterizing fair termination (the property of protocols that can always eventually terminate), fair compliance (the property of interactions that can always be extended to reach client satisfaction) and fair subtyping, a liveness-preserving refinement relation for session types.