Formal verification of a theory of packages

Over the years, open source distributions have become increasingly large and complex---as an example, the latest Debian distribution contains almost 30 000 packages. Consequently, the tools that deal with these distribution have also become more and more complex. Furthermore, to deal with increasing distribution sizes optimisation has become more important as well. To make sure that correctness is not sacrificed for complexity and optimisation, it is important to verify the underlying assumptions formally. In this paper, we present an example of such a verification: a formalisation in Coq of a theory of packages and their interdependencies