hyphence

hyphence (hyphen-fence) is a text-based document format that separates a document's metadata from its body with a --- fence, in the spirit of front-matter but with a small, strictly specified grammar:

! some-type-tag
@ blake2b256-…
key value

the body bytes, verbatim, after the blank line

The metadata section is a sequence of single-line entries — the ! line carries an opaque type tag, the @ line an opaque digest reference, and plain key value lines carry arbitrary fields. The format imposes no scheme on the type or digest payloads; it round-trips them verbatim. The body is never buffered or interpreted — it streams through untouched.

The canonical, normative specification (MUST/SHOULD/MAY) is RFC 0001; every conforming implementation must agree with the shared conformance vectors.

• docs/rfcs/0001-hyphence.md — normative format specification
• docs/man.7/hyphence.md — tutorial / reference manual

Layout

The repository is polyglot, with one implementation per language under a language-named top-level directory:

go/      Go implementation: the hyphence library (package hyphence) + the hyphence CLI (cmd/hyphence)
rust/    Rust implementation (crate hyphence, RFC 0001 envelope; zero deps, edition 2024)
docs/    RFC 0001-0003, hyphence-content.peg (langlang-validated grammar
         companion) + the man.1 (CLI) and man.7 (format) manuals

The Go library is dewey-only (no madder-internal imports), so it builds standalone. Its Type / Digest value types are opaque wrappers — they hold the ! tag and @ digest as plain strings and round-trip them verbatim.

The Rust crate (rust/hyphence/) implements the same RFC 0001 envelope (Document::{decode,encode}) with zero dependencies. A root virtual-workspace Cargo.toml exists only so the crate resolves as a cargo git dependency; it does not disturb the go/ ↔ rust/ peer layout. Both implementations are checked against the same rfc_vectors.txt (kept byte-identical by a vectors-equality flake check).

CLI

The Go module also ships a hyphence command (cmd/hyphence) — format-only inspection and re-emission of on-disk hyphence documents, reading a file or - for stdin:

hyphence validate FILE   # check a document against RFC 0001 (exit non-zero on error)
hyphence meta FILE       # print just the metadata section (boundaries stripped)
hyphence body FILE       # stream just the body bytes
hyphence format FILE     # re-emit in canonical line order (idempotent)

nix build produces it at result/bin/hyphence; nix run .#hyphence -- … runs it directly. The reference manual is docs/man.7/hyphence.md (installed as hyphence(7)).

Build & test

The build is Nix-driven (an igloo-based flake + gomod2nix for Go, a cargo virtual workspace for Rust). The justfile's default recipe is the full pre-merge CI lane.

just                 # build + test (the pre-merge CI gate)
just build           # regenerate gomod2nix.toml + run the flake checks
just test            # go + rust + bats suites, grammar validation (+ vectors), go vet, and the impure eng lint
just test-go         # just the Go test suite (RFC conformance needs -tags test)
just test-rust       # just the Rust test suite (unit + RFC conformance)
just test-bats       # just the CLI integration suite (zz-tests_bats)
just validate-grammar # just the langlang grammar-validation gate (docs/rfcs/hyphence-content.peg)
just test-grammar-vectors # just the langlang -input vector cross-check (RFC vectors vs. the grammar)
just codemod-fmt     # format the tree in place (nix fmt / conformist repair)

The hermetic test gates are flake checks: checks.go-test runs go test -tags test ./... (the -tags test flag is mandatory — the Go RFC conformance suite is behind a //go:build test constraint), checks.rust-test runs cargo test, and checks.vectors-equality keeps the two impls' vector files identical. nix flake check (via just build) runs all of them.

A devShell (nix develop, or direnv allow) provides the Go and Rust toolchains, gomod2nix, and the conformist formatter/linter tools.