We describe our experience implementing a broad category-theory library in
Coq. Category theory and computational performance are not usually mentioned in
the same breath, but we have needed substantial engineering effort to teach Coq
to cope with large categorical constructions without slowing proof script
processing unacceptably. In this paper, we share the lessons we have learned
about how to represent very abstract mathematical objects and arguments in Coq
and how future proof assistants might be designed to better support such
reasoning. One particular encoding trick to which we draw attention allows
category-theoretic arguments involving duality to be internalized in Coq's
logic with definitional equality. Ours may be the largest Coq development to
date that uses the relatively new Coq version developed by homotopy type
theorists, and we reflect on which new features were especially helpful.Comment: The final publication will be available at link.springer.com. This
version includes a full bibliography which does not fit in the Springer
version; other than the more complete references, this is the version
submitted as a final copy to ITP 201
