libxml-rs

Phase 11: Historical matrix — semantic epochs for libxml2/libxslt behavior.

Custodial native-Rust reimplementation of the libxml2 + libxslt ecosystem: a forensic reconstruction of observable behavior, implemented in native Rust, with C ABI compatibility for drop-in replacement.

This is not an XML crate. This is not an XSLT crate. This is not a wrapper. This is a custodial forensic archive and native-Rust reimplementation of the complete observable behavior of libxml2 and libxslt across their historical lifetimes.

Current Status: Phase 11 — Historical matrix (§85)

Phase 11 delivers the cross-version archaeology of §41 (historical oracle matrix), §42 (version fingerprints), §51 (multi-version triangulation). Per §85:

Deliverable: The project can explain how current behavior came to exist.

A configurable oracle matrix (oracle/historical/) builds 12 historical libxml2 releases (2.7.8 → 2.15.0) plus 5 libxslt releases (1.1.26 → 1.1.42) from the archaeology git clones and runs a 28-case behavioral corpus against every oracle and the system 2.15.3/1.1.45 binaries, capturing byte-exact stdout/stderr/exit and per-version sha256 fingerprints:

• oracle/historical/build.sh — era-tolerant oracle builder (era tag spellings, autotools modernizations, --without-threads for modern glibc)
• oracle/historical/run_matrix.sh — matrix runner + per-case epoch grouping; results/matrix.json holds version→case→sha256
• atlas/SEMANTIC_EPOCHS.md — the epoch map: 10 behavioral epochs (E-001…E-008 + exit-code epochs) correlated with the exact upstream commits/NEWS that created them
• courts/suites/historical/HIST-EPOCH-*.json — §43 casefiles; courts/receipts/historical-matrix-2026-08-29.json — §44 receipt

Headline findings (all correlated to upstream commits in the atlas):

• xmllint --xpath node-set output gained newline separators in 2.9.10 (commit da35eeae, an upstream-documented breaking change)
• The 2.9.10 parser regression (EndTag: '</' not found) was fixed in 2.9.11 (de5b624f); the second parse-error diagnostic was dropped entirely in 2.12
• A 2.13.0 cluster: parser/validation exit codes reworked (1→4, 4→3), entity-in-attribute errors reported twice, entity-decl debug nodes became TEXT compact (8d04f0ee)
• 2.15.0: --html dumps became single-line (newline writes removed from HTMLtree.c); --valid with no DTD returns exit 0
• libxslt core transform output is a stable epoch — byte-identical from 1.1.26 (2009) to 1.1.45

Phase 10 (historical)

Phase 10 delivered the xmllint and xmlcatalog command-line tools (§36):

Both tools are faithful native-Rust ports of the upstream programs, verified byte-for-byte against the system libxml2 2.15.3 binaries:

• xmllint CLI — --debug, --copy, --format, --valid/--postvalid, --dtdvalid, --xpath/--xpath0, --xinclude, --html/--xmlout, --noent, --no-compact, --encode, --recover, --dropdtd, --pedantic, --noout, --quiet, --nonet, --huge, … with upstream exit codes (0/1/3/4) and the upstream file:line: parser error : MSG + source-line/caret diagnostics
• xmlcatalog CLI — --create, --add, --del, --resolve (system/public/URI), --noout, --shell (interactive resolve/system/public/add/del/dump/help/exit), SGML→XML catalog conversion, upstream exit codes
• Compact text nodes — the parser reproduces libxml2's XML_PARSE_COMPACT inline text storage (≤15 bytes in the node struct), so --debug dumps show TEXT compact exactly like the oracle; merged/entity-interrupted text is correctly non-compact
• DTD validation diagnostics — --valid output (messages, caret placement, exit codes) matches the oracle for both no-DTD and declaration errors
• Entity expansion — --noent re-parses declared-entity content through the input stack (nested references and markup entities included), matching upstream trees
• HTML serialization — meta-charset insertion, upstream formatting rules (p/pre/param never formatted, single-child and inline elements inline), HTML document headers
• 1110 passing tests: cargo test --lib — 0 failures
• Differential oracle parity: a 44-case CLI suite (target/difftest_summary.sh) is byte-identical to the system tools (stdout + stderr + exit codes), plus a 30+ case edge corpus (entities, DTDs, HTML, compact/no-compact, debug dumps, XPath)

Phase 9 (historical)

Phase 9 delivered the complete EXSLT module set (§35) and the xsltproc command-line tool (§36):

All seven EXSLT modules are implemented natively and registered through the process-wide EXSLT registry (exsltRegisterAll, mirroring upstream):

• exsl: Common — exsl:node-set (with real result-tree-fragment support), exsl:object-type
• math: — math:max, math:min, math:sin, math:cos, math:tan, math:constant, math:power, math:sqrt, math:log, math:random, …
• set: — set:difference, set:intersection, set:distinct, set:has-same-node, set:leading, set:trailing
• str: — str:tokenize, str:padding, str:concat, str:split, str:replace, str:align, str:encode-uri, str:decode-uri
• dyn: — dyn:evaluate, dyn:element, dyn:attribute, dyn:map, dyn:call, …
• date: — date:date-time, date:date, date:time, date:year, date:month-in-year, date:day-in-month, date:day-of-week-in-month, date:format-date, date:add, date:difference, date:seconds, date:day-name, …
• func: — func:function, func:result (extension-function declarations)
• exsltRegisterAll C ABI export — mirrors upstream; xsltproc calls it at startup
• xsltproc CLI — full option surface (--param, --stringparam, --output, --noout, --html, --encoding, --xinclude, --profile, --maxdepth, --maxvars, --nonet, --nowrite, …) with upstream exit codes (1–11)
• RTF support — variables with inline content become context-owned result tree fragments; exsl:node-set($var)/path navigation works
• 1110 passing tests: cargo test --lib — 0 failures
• Differential oracle parity: a 12-case xsltproc corpus (basic transform, count()/AVTs, exsl:node-set/math:/set:/str:, predicates, attribute string-values, xsl:if/xsl:when, numbering, descending xsl:sort, key(), call-template with params, method="html") is byte-identical to the system libxslt 1.1.45 xsltproc (stdout + exit codes)

Underlying subsystem fixes landed during Phase 9

Phase 8 (historical)

Phase 8 implemented the complete native-Rust XSLT 1.0 engine: stylesheet compilation, template matching, pattern compilation, variable/parameter binding, keys, sorting, numbering, imports/includes, extensions, security, serialization, and the transform runtime (§31–§34). The XSLT engine operates exclusively on the Rust libxml implementation — no upstream libxml2/libxslt is loaded, linked, or shelled out to (§31):

Rust CLI → Rust libxslt compatibility layer → Rust XSLT engine
        → Rust XPath implementation → Rust libxml tree/parser/serializer

Subsystem fixes landed during Phase 8:

All six Phase 8 residuals are documented in atlas/RESIDUAL_LEDGER.md (R-000101–R-000106).

Build

cargo build                          # Build library + CLI binaries
cargo build --lib                    # Build only the library
cargo test --lib                     # Run library tests (1110 passing)

# Test C consumer compilation against our headers:
gcc -I include courts/suites/sanity/ABI-STRUCT-NODE-0001-abicheck.c -o /tmp/abicheck
clang -I include courts/suites/sanity/ABI-ENUM-0001-enumcheck.c -o /tmp/enumcheck

# Build and run oracle container:
docker build -f docker/Dockerfile.oracle -t libxml-rs/oracle:2.12.0 docker/

Published artifacts

• crates.io: libxml-rs 0.1.0-alpha.15
• GitHub: https://github.com/infinityabundance/libxml-rs

Oracle verification

The oracle Docker container builds libxml2 2.12.0 and libxslt 1.1.39 from source. The candidate (libxml-rs) does not link against system libxml2/libxslt — verified by the oracle contamination court.

Test coverage by subsystem

Project Structure

libxml-rs/
├── Cargo.toml              # Single Cargo package (no workspace)
├── src/
│   ├── lib.rs              # Library entry point
│   ├── abi/                # C ABI compatibility layer (§4, §14)
│   ├── xml/                # libxml2 implementation (§1, §3, §31)
│   ├── xslt/               # libxslt implementation (§31–§34)
│   ├── exslt/              # EXSLT modules (§35)
│   ├── compatibility/      # Historical profiles, quirks, platform (§68, §69)
│   └── bin/                # CLI tools: xmllint, xmlcatalog, xsltproc (§36)
├── include/                # Compatible C headers (§15)
├── atlas/                  # Forensic archive (§7–§12)
│   ├── releases/           # Release manifests per version
│   ├── api/                # Public API inventories
│   ├── abi/                # ABI snapshots
│   ├── symbols/            # Symbol table comparisons
│   ├── config/             # Build configuration profiles
│   ├── standards/          # Standards mapping
│   ├── HISTORY.md          # Complete release history
│   ├── LORE.md             # Undocumented behavior archive
│   ├── QUIRKS.md           # Confirmed compatibility quirks
│   ├── PARITY_MATRIX.md    # Current parity status
│   ├── RESIDUAL_LEDGER.md  # Unexplained differences
│   └── SECURITY_HISTORY.md # Vulnerability custody
├── oracle/                 # Reproducible upstream build environment (§39)
├── courts/                 # Differential testing framework (§40–§50)
│   ├── schema.json         # Casefile schema
│   ├── suites/             # Court case suites
│   ├── receipts/           # Execution receipts
│   └── tools/              # Court runner
├── tools/                  # Archaeology and analysis tooling
│   ├── archaeology/        # manifest.py, apiatlas.py, symbols.py, delta.py, profileconfig.py
│   └── courts/             # Court runner
├── docker/                 # Reproducible Docker oracle images
├── docs/                   # Technical documentation
└── archaeology/            # Upstream git clones (immutable, offline)

Build

cargo build              # Build the library and CLI binaries
cargo build --lib        # Build only the library
cargo test --lib         # Run library tests (1110 passing)
cargo build --release    # Optimized build (LTO, panic=abort)

The crate builds as cdylib + staticlib + rlib; the build script also emits libxml-2.0.pc/libxslt.pc pkg-config files, xml2-config/xslt-config scripts, and SONAME symlinks into the target directory.

License

Licensed under either of:

• MIT license (LICENSE-MIT)
• Apache License, Version 2.0 (LICENSE-APACHE)

at your option.

Project Status

See atlas/PARITY_MATRIX.md for the detailed, evidence-bounded parity matrix and atlas/RESIDUAL_LEDGER.md for the residual ledger.