Papers › Dala: A Simple Capability-Based Dynamic Language Design For Data Race-Freedom
Dala: A Simple Capability-Based Dynamic Language Design For Data Race-Freedom
Kiko Fernandez-Reyes, Isaac Oscar Gariano, James Noble, Erin Greenwood-Thessman, Michael Homer, Tobias Wrigstad
The archive published only this paper's code-link row. Authors, date and abstract are from arXiv's metadata (CC0), read from the Kaggle arXiv metadata snapshot of 2026-09-12 where its title matched the archive's; the title is the archive's.
Dynamic languages like Erlang, Clojure, JavaScript, and E adopted data-race freedom by design. To enforce data-race freedom, these languages either deep copy objects during actor (thread) communication or proxy back to their owning thread. We present Dala, a simple programming model that ensures data-race freedom while supporting efficient inter-thread communication. Dala is a dynamic, concurrent, capability-based language that relies on three core capabilities: immutable values can be shared freely; isolated mutable objects can be transferred between threads but not aliased; local objects can be aliased within their owning thread but not dereferenced by other threads. Objects with capabilities can co-exist with unsafe objects, that are unchecked and may suffer data races, without compromising the safety of safe objects. We present a formal model of Dala, prove data race-freedom and state and prove a dynamic gradual guarantee. These theorems guarantee data race-freedom when using safe capabilities and show that the addition of capabilities is semantics preserving modulo permission and cast errors.
Code
Repository list and official/mentioned flags are the archive's, frozen 2025-07-28. Reachability, where shown, is from one Syntology probe window (2026-09-16 to 2026-09-18); repositories not probed show nothing. GitHub stars are not tracked.
Code Syntology ran Syntology
Not run by Syntology. Nothing on this page verifies that the listed code works.
Results from the paper archive 2025-07-28
No leaderboard rows for this paper in the archive.
Report a problem or propose a change · a person checks every report against the paper or source before anything changes; decisions are listed on /corrections