Thirteen drift-locked document vectors -- four accept, nine reject, one per
implemented rejection class -- gated as conformance step [7e] beside [7d]'s 65
decode vectors.
The checker distinguishes three outcomes, and that distinction is the whole
point. `Rejected`, `AcceptedCanonical`, and `AcceptedNonCanonical` are separate
verdicts, and every one of the four wrong pairings is a failure: an accept vector
that merely normalizes fails, and a reject vector that is accepted -- whether as
canonical or after normalization -- fails. The decode corpus learned this the
expensive way, where collapsing "rejected" with "accepted but normalized" let a
corpus pass against the exact decoders it was written to catch.
Accept vectors assert the byte-checkable equation `project(serialize(parse(T)))
== T`, which quantifies over TEXTS. The comments say plainly that it must not be
replaced with bundle identity, and name the three deliberate binary losses --
duplicate blobs collapsing under derived-ordering, regenerated physical layout,
and dropped accelerators -- so the next reader does not "fix" it into a bundle
comparison and then chase a phantom.
Reach is asserted exactly, not merely non-zero: two documents each carrying an
extension, a canonical base, a custom profile, a lineage, and more than one
envelope; and every reject class must have exactly one vector the parser really
refused. A mislabelled reject drops its class to zero rather than collecting
credit from its label.
The corpus was verified by breaking the implementation, not the checker: making
`parse_document` silently tolerate a missing trailing LF is caught three ways,
and the suite reports "declared reject, but was ACCEPTED and normalized".
Review fixed one defect in the semantic harness. It claimed to check
`semantics(parse(project(B))) == semantics(B)` but compared `parse(project(B))`
against `document_from_bundle(B)` -- and `project_bundle` *is*
`project_text_document(document_from_bundle(..))`, so both sides flowed through
one function and any bug in it cancelled out. Dropping an envelope there passed.
It now compares against the envelopes the test itself serialized in, which is
independent of the projection path; the same mutation fails.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Two review findings after P4. Both real.
The tag-omission failure could recur. After the P4 fix there were STILL four
hand-maintained lists -- a test-local all_tags(), a barrier test spelling
0u8..=30, a fuzz corpus naming five tags, a vector corpus naming four -- plus a
malformed-bytes test asserting that 31 rejects. A future tag 31 added to
discriminant() and omitted from decode_canonical() would have left every one of
them green, and the malformed test would have LOCKED it, exactly as the 30
version did two commits ago.
operation_kind_tag_vocabulary! is now the single source. It generates
discriminant, from_discriminant, and OperationKindTag::PAYLOAD_FREE from one
list, and the generated discriminant match is exhaustive over the enum -- so a
variant added to the enum and not to the macro fails to COMPILE. Everything
downstream reads PAYLOAD_FREE: the decoder, the fuzz corpus (all 31 tags, not
five), the conformance vectors (an accept vector per tag: 65 vectors, not 37),
and the edit-barrier round-trip. Every "one past the vocabulary" constant is
computed, never spelled; a spelled constant is the trap that springs on whoever
appends the next tag.
Verified end to end with a hypothetical tag 31. Added to the enum alone: compile
error. Added to the enum and the macro: it compiles, decodes, and every derived
check passes because they read PAYLOAD_FREE -- while the committed corpus's
drift lock AND its now-stale "one past the vocabulary" reject vector both fail,
forcing the new vectors into the diff. There is no path where a new tag leaves
everything green.
Second finding: the corpus called itself normative while the spec said it was
deferred. Binary Format's "About This Companion" listed the cross-implementation
decoder test among things the document does not cover, and the Golden Anchor
Registry called it "the deferred conformance harness" whose literal-byte vectors
a future test "should add". Both now ratify it. New req:binfmt:decode-vectors
and a "The Decode Vector Corpus" section: a conforming decoder MUST accept every
accept vector for a surface it implements, MUST reject every reject vector, and
MUST re-encode an accepted value to exactly its bytes -- and accepting a reject
vector and then normalizing it IS accepting it. Binary Format 0.8.0 -> 0.9.0.
The wire-format fuzzer stays an implementation deliverable. The corpus header
now cites the requirement instead of asserting one.
Gate: fmt clean, clippy 0, 30 targets / 1024 passed / 0 failed, docs 0 under
-D warnings, conformance 8/8 with [7d] at 65 vectors, zero golden churn,
binary_format rebuilds with no undefined references.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
spec/vectors/decode_vectors.txt -- 37 committed byte strings across five
surfaces, each with its normative accept/reject verdict. The reference
implementation's fuzzers prove its own decoders self-consistent, which says
nothing about whether a foreign decoder agrees with the format. This is what one
is checked against. Gated in the conformance suite as [7d], and drift-locked:
the committed file must equal vectors::render(), so a wire-format change lands
in the diff.
It found a real defect on its first run. OperationKindTag::TransposeInterval
encoded to [30] and its own decoder REJECTED it -- Push 4a added the variant to
discriminant() and never to decode_canonical. OperationKindTag is what edit
barriers persist, so a barrier prohibiting TransposeInterval could be written and
never read back. Silent data loss on reopen.
Four things should have caught it. None did, and two made it worse:
The round-trip test enumerated DISCRIMINANTS -- (0u8..30).map(decode_canonical)
-- starting from bytes the decoder already knew, so it structurally could not
notice a variant the decoder was missing. It now enumerates VARIANTS from one
all_tags() list, with a completeness check in both directions.
The distinctness test's hand-written variant list omitted it too. Same list now.
operation_kind_tag_decode_rejects_malformed_bytes asserted that tag 30 is
REJECTED, and layout-ir's decode_rejects_unknown_discriminants asserted the
same at the barrier surface. Both were locking the bug in place and made it
look deliberate. Both now name 31, and a new barrier test round-trips a barrier
prohibiting every tag -- the persistence surface where this actually bites.
The P2 decode fuzzer fed valid corpus bytes to the tag decoder and tallied the
failure as a REJECTION, like any garbage input. It never asserted that an
unmutated corpus entry decodes. Both fuzzers now do, as a pre-pass.
The harness had the same disease as the code. `check` collapsed "rejected" with
"accepted but does not re-encode", so a decoder that silently normalizes
non-canonical bytes PASSED the reject vectors it was written to catch. Verified:
removing the whole-state guard, and restoring the lenient compression codec, both
left the corpus green. `check` now returns Ok(injective) for accept and Err for
reject and never conflates them -- silently normalizing non-canonical bytes IS
accepting them. With that fixed, all four defect mutations fail the corpus, each
naming its class.
The corpus pins one vector per class this repo has shipped a bug in:
non-canonical-map-order (a guard catches it; no per-site check exists),
non-canonical-vec-order (only a per-site check catches it; a guard is blind),
lenient-sub-codec (a guard masked it in the manifest; the index had none), plus
trailing-bytes, truncated, unknown-discriminant, count-exceeds-remaining. A test
fails if one goes missing.
Gate: fmt clean, clippy 0, 30 targets / 1024 passed / 0 failed, docs 0 under
-D warnings, conformance 8/8 (now including [7d]), zero golden churn.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Levi Neuwirth