On the Interoperability of Programming Languages via Translation

Interoperability between systems written in different programming languages can be challenging. While C offers some degree of interoperability, it is an unsafe language and does not encourage consideration of abstractions independently from their implementations. This study aims to explore the possibility of extending general interoperability beyond C by evaluating the current suitability of languages and tools for transpilation, which refers to compiling code into another source language instead of machine code. Specifically, we focus on transpiling the runtime of one language into a target language. This study aims to preserve safety invariants between Pony and Rust, two programming languages that have similar but distinct high-level language semantics. Two phases are involved in translating the Pony runtime into Rust: improving the C source to better represent the invariants as permitted by C and addressing the inadequacies identified in the tooling, and refactoring the resulting Rust code to identify and correct any errors caused by misuse. As a result, this study has developed a methodology for implementing the runtime of one language in another and applied it to a case study for translating the Pony runtime into Rust. Through this translation process, the study has identified improvements to enhance Rust's suitability for future work, reported the unsafety issue in the Pony runtime, and highlighted insufficiencies in several other tools.