---
title: Solana ABI management process
---

This document proposes the Solana ABI management process. The ABI management
process is an engineering practice and a supporting technical framework to avoid
introducing unintended incompatible ABI changes.

# Problem

The Solana ABI (binary interface to the cluster) is currently only defined
implicitly by the implementation and requires a very careful eye to notice
breaking changes. This makes it extremely difficult to upgrade the software
on an existing cluster without rebooting the ledger.

# Requirements and objectives

- Unintended ABI changes can be detected as CI failures mechanically.
- Newer implementation must be able to process the oldest data (since genesis)
  once we go mainnet.
- The objective of this proposal is to protect the ABI while sustaining rather
  rapid development by opting for a mechanical process rather than a very long
  human-driven auditing process.
- Once signed cryptographically, data blob must be identical, so no
  in-place data format update is possible regardless of inbound and outbound of
  the online system. Also, considering the sheer volume of transactions we're
  aiming to handle, retrospective in-place update is undesirable at best.

# Solution

Instead of natural human's eye due-diligence, which should be assumed to fail
regularly, we need a systematic assurance of not breaking the cluster when
changing the source code.

For that purpose, we introduce a mechanism of marking every ABI-related things
in source code (`struct`s, `enum`s) with the new `#[frozen_abi]` attribute. This
takes hard-coded digest value derived from types of its fields via
`ser::Serialize`. And the attribute automatically generates a unit test to try
to detect any unsanctioned changes to the marked ABI-related things.

However, the detection cannot be complete; no matter how hard we statically
analyze the source code, it's still possible to break ABI. For example, this
includes not-`derive`d hand-written `ser::Serialize`, underlying library's
implementation changes (for example `bincode`), CPU architecture differences.
The detection of these possible ABI incompatibilities is out-of-scope for this
ABI management.

# Definitions

ABI item/type: various types to be used for serialization, which collectively
comprises the whole ABI for any system components. For example, those types
include `struct`s and `enum`s.

ABI item digest: Some fixed hash derived from type information of ABI item's
fields.

# Example

```patch
+#[frozen_abi(digest="eXSMM7b89VY72V...")]
 #[derive(Serialize, Default, Deserialize, Debug, PartialEq, Eq, Clone)]
 pub struct Vote {
     /// A stack of votes starting with the oldest vote
     pub slots: Vec<Slot>,
     /// signature of the bank's state at the last slot
     pub hash: Hash,
 }
```

# Developer's workflow

To know the digest for new ABI items, developers can add `frozen_abi` with a
random digest value and run the unit tests and replace it with the correct
digest from the assertion test error message.

In general, once we add `frozen_abi` and its change is published in the stable
release channel, its digest should never change. If such a change is needed, we
should opt for defining a new `struct` like `FooV1`. And special release flow
like hard forks should be approached.

# Implementation remarks

We use some degree of macro machinery to automatically generate unit tests
and calculate a digest from ABI items. This is doable by clever use of
`serde::Serialize` (`[1]`) and `any::type_name` (`[2]`). For a precedent for similar
implementation, `ink` from the Parity Technologies `[3]` could be informational.

# Implementation details

The implementation's goal is to detect unintended ABI changes automatically as
much as possible. To that end, the digest of structural ABI information is
calculated with best-effort accuracy and stability.

When the ABI digest check is run, it dynamically computes an ABI digest by
recursively digesting the ABI of fields of the ABI item, by re-using the
`serde`'s serialization functionality, proc macro and generic specialization.
And then, the check `assert!`s that its finalized digest value is identical as
what is specified in the `frozen_abi` attribute.

To realize that, it creates an example instance of the type and a custom
`Serializer` instance for `serde` to recursively traverse its fields as if
serializing the example for real. This traversing must be done via `serde` to
really capture what kinds of data actually would be serialized by `serde`, even
considering custom non-`derive`d `Serialize` trait implementations.

# The ABI digesting process

This part is a bit complex. There is three inter-depending parts: `AbiExample`,
`AbiDigester` and `AbiEnumVisitor`.

First, the generated test creates an example instance of the digested type with
a trait called `AbiExample`, which should be implemented for all of digested
types like the `Serialize` and return `Self` like the `Default` trait. Usually,
it's provided via generic trait specialization for most of common types. Also
it is possible to `derive` for `struct` and `enum` and can be hand-written if
needed.

The custom `Serializer` is called `AbiDigester`. And when it's called by `serde`
to serialize some data, it recursively collects ABI information as much as
possible. `AbiDigester`'s internal state for the ABI digest is updated
differentially depending on the type of data. This logic is specifically
redirected via with a trait called `AbiEnumVisitor` for each `enum` type. As the
name suggests, there is no need to implement `AbiEnumVisitor` for other types.

To summarize this interplay, `serde` handles the recursive serialization control
flow in tandem with `AbiDigester`. The initial entry point in tests and child
`AbiDigester`s use `AbiExample` recursively to create an example object
hierarchal graph. And `AbiDigester` uses `AbiEnumVisitor` to inquiry the actual
ABI information using the constructed sample.

`Default` isn't enough for `AbiExample`. Various collection's `::default()` is
empty, yet, we want to digest them with actual items. And, ABI digesting can't
be realized only with `AbiEnumVisitor`. `AbiExample` is required because an
actual instance of type is needed to actually traverse the data via `serde`.

On the other hand, ABI digesting can't be done only with `AbiExample`, either.
`AbiEnumVisitor` is required because all variants of an `enum` cannot be
traversed just with a single variant of it as a ABI example.

Digestable information:

- rust's type name
- `serde`'s data type name
- all fields in `struct`
- all variants in `enum`
- `struct`: normal(`struct {...}`) and tuple-style (`struct(...)`)
- `enum`: normal variants and `struct`- and `tuple`- styles.
- attributes: `serde(serialize_with=...)` and `serde(skip)`

Not digestable information:

- Any custom serialize code path not touched by the sample provided by
  `AbiExample`. (technically not possible)
- generics (must be a concrete type; use `frozen_abi` on concrete type
  aliases)

# References

1. [(De)Serialization with type info · Issue #1095 · serde-rs/serde](https://github.com/serde-rs/serde/issues/1095#issuecomment-345483479)
2. [`std::any::type_name` - Rust](https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/any/fn.type_name.html)
3. [Parity's ink to write smart contracts](https://github.com/paritytech/ink)
