[pdf] [ArXiV] [Code] [ELLIS Talk (ML audience)] [PLDI Talk (PL audience)] [Poster] [GitHub Action]
TLDR: Use meta-learning to predict Python type annotations, including rare ones.
Type inference over partial contexts in dynamically typed
languages is challenging. In this work, we present a graph
neural network model that predicts types by probabilistically reasoning over a program’s structure, names, and patterns. The network uses deep similarity learning to learn a
TypeSpace — a continuous relaxation of the discrete space of
types — and how to embed the type properties of a symbol
(i.e. identifier) into it. Importantly, our model can employ
one-shot learning to predict an open vocabulary of types, including rare and user-defined ones. We realise our approach
in Typilus for Python that combines the TypeSpace with an
optional type checker. We show that Typilus accurately predicts types. Typilus confidently predicts types for 70% of
all annotatable symbols; when it predicts a type, that type
optionally type checks 95% of the time. Typilus can also find
incorrect type annotations; two important and popular open
source libraries, fairseq
and allennlp
, accepted our pull
requests that fixed the annotation errors Typilus discovered.