GVariant: Efficient Partial Deserialisation

Abstract

<p> This work documents the creation of a new serialisation format. Developed for use in the GNOME platform, the requirements for this serialisation format are based on the unique needs of the community, plus some "guiding principles" that have developed in the community over the years. </p> <p> The serialisation format is particularly designed to allow for rapid deserialisation -which is expected to be the most common use case - with most operations occurring in a small constant time (regardless of the size of the data). </p> <p> Finally, a complete implementation of the serialisation format - called GVariant - is presented. GVariant models each value as an object with an API that is both convenient for GNOME programmers and has a flavour that they are familiar with. </p>