bincake

Serde-free deterministic binary serialization.

Documentation

https://docs.rs/bincake

Overview

bincake serializes and deserializes Rust types to and from compact little-endian binary, with no dependency on serde.

• Deterministic output — identical data always produces identical bytes
• Derive macros for automatic implementation on custom types
  • Controlled by derive feature flag
• Built on taped for zero-allocation byte reading
• Numeric types, strings, vecs, and tuples supported out of the box

Originally developed as the bytecode serialization format for rvm, extracted as a standalone library after proving stable under real usage.

Example

use bincake::*;

#[derive(Serialize)]
struct Instruction {
    opcode: u8,
    operand: u32,
}

// Serialize
let instr = Instruction { opcode: 0x01, operand: 42 };
let mut dest = vec![];
dest.write(instr);

// Deserialize
let mut src = bytes.to_tape();
let instr = src.read::<Instruction>();

When to use this

• Serializing bytecode, binary protocols, or other compact binary formats
• Anywhere deterministic output is required (content hashing, signing)
• Projects where serde compile times are a concern
• no_std environments

When not to use this

• Human-readable formats → use serde with serde_json or toml
• Schema evolution and forward compatibility → use prost (protobuf)
• Maximum encode/decode performance → use rkyv
• Interoperability with other languages or systems → use bincode