alh477/dcf-serialize repository overview

⁠DCF Serialize

Universal Serialization/Deserialization Shim for the DeMoD Communications Framework

⁠Overview

This repository provides Docker images for DCF Serialize, a high-performance, system-agnostic binary serialization library designed for distributed systems, real-time gaming, and IoT applications.

The library is pure C11 with no external dependencies and is built and installed in the images.

⁠Available Tags

• latest, 5.2.0 — Minimal runtime image with the shared library installed
• 5.2.0-dev, dev — Development image with build tools (gcc, make, gdb, valgrind, etc.)
• 5.2.0-test, test — Test runner image (executes the library test suite on start)

⁠Features

• Platform independent (Linux, macOS, Windows, BSD)
• Big-endian network byte order with automatic conversion
• Zero-copy reads where possible
• Type-safe self-describing format
• Built-in CRC32 checksum validation
• Schema/reflection-based struct serialization
• LEB128 variable-length integer encoding
• No external library dependencies

⁠Quick Usage

⁠Runtime image (use as base for your application)

FROM alh477/dcf-serialize:latest

# Copy your source and build your app that links against -ldcf_serialize
COPY . /src
WORKDIR /src
RUN gcc -o myapp myapp.c -ldcf_serialize

CMD ["./myapp"]

⁠Development / building locally

docker run --rm -it -v $(pwd):/src alh477/dcf-serialize:dev
# Inside container:
cd /src
make          # or gcc ... -ldcf_serialize

⁠Run tests

docker run --rm alh477/dcf-serialize:test

⁠Wire Format

┌──────────┬─────────┬──────────┬───────┬────────────┬──────────┬──────────┬──────────┐
│  Magic   │ Version │ MsgType  │ Flags │ PayloadLen │ Sequence │ Payload  │  CRC32   │
│  4 bytes │ 2 bytes │ 2 bytes  │ 1 byte│  4 bytes   │  4 bytes │ N bytes  │  4 bytes │
└──────────┴─────────┴──────────┴───────┴────────────┴──────────┴──────────┴──────────┘

⁠API Highlights

The library provides a full serialization/deserialization API in dcf_serialize.h. Key features:

• Writer/Reader contexts
• Primitive, string, bytes, array, map, struct support
• Schema-based reflection for structs
• Zero-copy reads for strings/bytes
• CRC32 validation

See the header file in the repository for full documentation.

⁠Source & Contributing

Source code and full documentation:
https://github.com/alh477/dcf-serialize⁠

Issues: https://github.com/alh477/dcf-serialize/issues⁠

Licensed under BSD-3-Clause © 2024-2025 DeMoD LLC.

⁠Contact

• Organization: DeMoD LLC
• Website: https://demod.ltd⁠