2021-11-09 –, Room 2
This talk will introduce some elements of ongoing research in the mathematical structure of package dependencies. This work helps to explain how to think about dependencies, how to compare expressiveness of dependency systems (and strength of solvers), and also how to model an algebra of operations of package repositories.
This will be an accessible talk introducing and motivating some of the more basic mathematical constructions in "The Semantics of Package Management via Event Structures" (https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.01542) and "The Topological and Logical Structure of Concurrency and Dependency via Distributive Lattices" (https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.05688). Among other things it will explain how the underappreciated Bruns-Lakser completion gives insight into nix-style package management, and how models of package repositories can draw on tools developed for the semantics of concurrent programs.
This work both draws on modern mathematical techniques and also hands-on experience as a contributor and advisor to the Cabal package system in Haskell, as well as a maintainer of the Hackage repository of Haskell packages.
Gershom Bazerman is a longtime contributor to the Haskell ecosystem. He is a maintainer of the Hackage package repository, and contributor to the Cabal package management system. He also served on the Haskell.org committee for five years, and is a co-founder of both the NY Haskell Users Group and the NY Homotopy and Type Theory reading group. He currently works as a senior software engineer at Awake Security.