libhdf5 fails to read a VL element whose global heap address is
undefined (all 0xff), even at length 0 ("addr undefined"); we returned
"" (or an empty sequence) in every reader. Checked with h5py first:
libhdf5 writes a null element with address 0, which still reads as
empty, and h5py writes "" as a zero-size heap object at a real address,
so no file they write relies on the old behaviour. read_vl_bytes now
treats address 0 as null whatever the length, as VlResolver does.
Tests, each failing before: vl_data unit test (8- and 4-byte offsets,
lengths 0 and 1); clawhdf5 vl_data_interop
a_vl_element_at_the_undefined_heap_address_fails_like_h5py (also checks
where h5py writes ""); h5rs dump --json and check --data on the patched
`undef` dataset; clawhdf5-wasm vl_strings.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
h5rs (dump, ls, diff, check --data) kept its own lenient VL decoder:
a heap object longer than its element was cut to the element's length
(libhdf5 and h5py refuse it), a null string printed "" where h5dump
prints NULL, the stored element size was trusted, and every heap
collection was kept as an owned copy for the whole run. It now resolves
each element with VlResolver::element / string_element (new: one element
in place, borrowing from the file), and refuses a VL type whose stored
element size is not 4 + offset size + 4, as File does. H5::heap_object
and its cache are gone. h5diff compares a null VL string equal to an
empty one; so does h5rs diff.
clawhdf5-wasm already resolved VL strings with read_vl_strings; it now
uses VlResolver and checks the stored element size before reading, as
File::read_string does.
Tests (h5py writes the files, patched for "a\0b", a null element and
mis-sized heap objects, with 8- and 4-byte offsets):
- h5rs_interop dump_prints_vl_data_like_h5dump: byte-identical to h5dump;
- dump_json_vl_values_match_h5py: h5py's values, errors where h5py fails;
- check_data_flags_mis_sized_vl_heap_objects;
- clawhdf5-wasm tests/vl_strings.rs: wasm, File and h5py agree.
All four fail before. check --data over the 150 cve_hdf5 CVE and fuzzer
files now passes 15 (h5dump rejects 8 of them), was 16 and 9: the
stored-size check flags cve-2024-32608. h5rs-check-ok-files.sh --data:
0 of 422 flagged; h5rs-fuzz.sh: clean on 180 files.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
VlResolver kept an owned copy of every object of every heap collection
it parsed, for the whole read. Collections nested inside each other's
object data, 32 bytes apart with each element pointing at a different
one, made retained memory O(elements x file size): 1.58 GB for a 744 KB
file (read_vl_strings did the same before VlResolver). Chaining every
collection's objects into one shared run of tiny objects made parse
time O(elements x objects) as well. libhdf5 refuses these files.
- The cache records where each object lies (GlobalHeapCollection::
parse_index, new) instead of copying it, and is dropped past a 32 MiB
budget.
- A collection overlapping one already read is an error: libhdf5 gives
every collection its own block, so only a crafted file has them.
- parse and parse_index refuse a collection that runs past the end of
the file and an object that runs past the end of its collection.
tests/vl_heap_bounds.rs measures peak heap use with a counting
allocator: 129 MB and 350 MB live before on its two crafted files (64 KB
and 176 KB), 97 KB and 0.9 MB now. Conformance unchanged at 575 of 697.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
VL-string datasets (h5py's default str dtype) failed read_string with
"type mismatch: expected String, got VariableLength". read_string now
reads fixed- and variable-length strings, with h5py's values (a string
ends at a NUL, a null element is ""). New:
- Dataset::read_string_bytes: each VL string's exact bytes;
- Dataset::read_string_selection: hyperslabs/points of either kind;
- Dataset::read_vlen::<T>() and read_vlen_selection::<T>(): VL sequences
of numbers as Vec<Vec<T>>, T in f64/f32/i64/i32/u64, converted like the
other typed readers;
- File::decode_strings / decode_string_bytes / decode_vlen: VL values in
compound fields and AttrValue::Raw attributes;
- MmapDataset and LazyDataset: read_string for VL strings,
read_string_bytes and read_vlen.
tests/vl_data_interop.rs checks every path against h5py with 8- and
4-byte offsets: scalar, 1-D and 2-D, ASCII and UTF-8, empty strings,
contiguous, compact, chunked with gzip and shuffle, unwritten and partly
written chunks, hyperslabs, compound members, attributes, a big-endian
base type, and a patched file with an embedded NUL and mis-sized heap
objects. NetCDF-4 string variables read too (netCDF4-python test).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
In a file with sizeof_addr = 4, a VL string attribute came back as
AttrValue::Raw, a compound's VL member failed with
GlobalHeapObjectNotFound and VL datasets failed with a size mismatch.
Two bugs: Datatype::type_size() said 16 for every VL type, while the
element is 4 + offset size + 4 bytes (12 here); and the global heap was
parsed without the padding libhdf5 puts after its collection and object
headers (both round up to 8), so with 4-byte lengths every object was
looked up 4 bytes early. Datatype::VariableLength now carries the size
its datatype message stores, and writes it back.
Checked against h5py in tests/vl_offset4_interop.rs (fails with either
fix reverted). Conformance unchanged at 575 of 697; in cve-2024-32608 a
VL attribute whose datatype claims 524304-byte elements is now an error
(h5py cannot iterate those attributes at all).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
h5py threads stay flat (global lock); clawhdf5 hyperslab reads of deflate
data scale to 1244 MB/s at 16 threads (9.7x h5py threads, 0.89x h5py
processes). Two deficits recorded as open issues: full chunked reads stop
scaling at ~4 threads (chunk cache suspected), and contiguous reads are
4x (full) to 8x (hyperslab) slower than h5py single-threaded.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
Measured on tank on the 150 cvefiles/ and fuzzerfiles/ of cve_hdf5 (the
earlier text said 180): check --data passes 16 (was 28), and h5dump
1.14.6 rejects 9 of those (was 21). It still flags none of the 418
conformance files both readers read in full.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
The short-decoding chunk (wrong data, pre-existing), the Blosc header
underflow (crash) and filter 32023 registration, each with its date and
what it changes; the conformance count is unchanged at 573 of 697.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
The compound overlap check measured each earlier member with
Datatype::type_size, which is a fixed 16 for a variable-length type. On
disk a VL member takes 4 + offset size + 4 bytes, 12 in a file with
4-byte offsets, so a member right after one was refused as "member
overlaps with previous member" (and with the type, every attribute of
the object). libhdf5 measures members by their decoded, stored size
(times a v1 member's array dimensions); so does this now.
Reading VL values in such files is a separate, older gap, now recorded
in known-issues.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
The README said check skips only "global heap collections other than
those a value read touches", but read_dataset returns the raw heap IDs,
so no collection was ever read: a file whose global heap collection
claims a 4 GiB object passed `check --data` with no problems, while
h5dump (and h5rs dump/diff) fail on it.
With --data, every variable-length element (strings and sequences, also
inside compounds, arrays and nested sequences) of every dataset and
attribute is followed into its collection. A collection that does not
parse, a missing heap object, or a sequence longer than its heap object
is a problem at the collection's address, once per object; the summary
counts the collections read.
Measured on tank, 2026-09-26: the 418 fully-read conformance ok files
still pass (scripts/h5rs-check-ok-files.sh --data, 0 flagged), and
`check --data` now flags 152 of the 180 CVE-corpus files (was 147); of
the 28 it passes, h5dump 1.14.6 rejects 21 (was 26 of 33).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
CHANGELOG (Correctness): the new header, datatype, chunk and truncation
checks, what is left out on purpose (checks HDF5 2.0 lacks; the two
v2.7.0 writer quirks), the conformance numbers and the new FormatError
variants. known-issues: the "Header checks" audit gap is fixed, with the
one CVE object and two CVE files libhdf5 still refuses and we read.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
Measured on the CVE corpus: check --data passes 33 of 180 files, and
h5dump 1.14.6 rejects 26 of those. Recorded under the open "Header checks"
gap and in the crate README.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
CHANGELOG (Unreleased): LZF, bitshuffle, bzip2 and Blosc read and write
in pure Rust, their features, the ChunkOptions::plugin field (breaking for
struct-literal construction), the filter registry, the named
UnsupportedFilter message, and Blosc2/ZFP still unimplemented.
README: the clawhdf5-format feature table gains lzf (default),
bitshuffle, bzip2, blosc and plugin-filters, with how to write them and
what is not implemented; no speed claims. docs/known-issues.md: the audit's
filter gap is marked fixed 2026-09-26 for LZF/bitshuffle/bzip2/Blosc,
Blosc2 and ZFP still open. CLAUDE.md: the clawhdf5-filters row no longer
says "No Blosc". clawhdf5-format's crate docs list the new features.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
Changelog entry with the sizes measured on tank on 2026-09-26 (and the
h5wasm 0.10.3 comparison), the browser build's limits as a known-issues
entry, and where its tests run.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
Unlimited VDS mappings were refused, and printf-style source names
("f-%b.h5") were not expanded, so those regions read as fill (read-matrix
case 0470: 29 of 30 values wrong). All 7 virtual datasets in the libhdf5
test set use such mappings.
Implement H5Dvirtual.c's semantics in the vds module:
- %b is the block number, %% a literal %, other specifiers are an error;
block j of the virtual selection comes from the source named with j,
probing from 0 to the first missing source (printf gap 0);
- unlimited source/virtual selections are clipped to what the source's
current extent fills (H5S_hyper_get_clip_extent_match, partial last
block included);
- the extent is recomputed as H5Dget_space does (view "last available":
the largest clip, never below what limited mappings need), exposed as
vds::virtual_dataset_extent and used by Dataset::shape();
- a source in the other byte order is byte-swapped; other conversions stay
an error.
Tests: vds_interop::vds_printf_source_names,
vds_unlimited_mappings_follow_source_extents (h5py low-level API, earliest
and latest format) and vds_libhdf5_test_files (vds-eiger, 4_vds and
vds-percival-unlim-maxmin from HDF5's tools/test/testfiles/vds, committed
as fixtures) all compare shape and values with h5py; unit tests for the
clip arithmetic, name parsing and mapping rules.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
libhdf5 walks a local heap's free list when it loads the heap's data and
refuses the heap ("bad heap free list") when a free block starts or ends
outside the data segment, or links to offset 0. We never looked at the
free list, so a damaged old-style group listed names read from the broken
heap: once the user block of cve-2021-36977.h5 was applied, its root
listed eight garbage names where libhdf5 fails.
LocalHeap::validate_free_list (new) mirrors H5HL__fl_deserialize, with a
cycle bound, and accepts H5HL_FREE_NULL (1) or an all-ones head as the
end of the list. Like libhdf5 it runs when the first name is needed, not
on parse, so an empty group with a damaged heap still lists as empty
(cve-2018-13871.h5, cve-2024-29166.h5, gh-4431-poc-03.h5 keep matching
h5py).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
A file may start with a user block (h5py userblock_size, h5jam), putting
the superblock at 512, 1024, ...; every address in the file is then
relative to the superblock. The signature search found it, but every
reader passed the whole file to the parsers, so addresses landed
userblock bytes early and the root group failed with
InvalidObjectHeaderVersion (twithub.h5, twithub513.h5,
h5clear_fsm_persist_user_*.h5).
Readers now view the file from the superblock on, taking the signature's
position as the base address as libhdf5 does: File (mmap, buffered,
from_bytes), MmapFile, LazyFile, AsyncHDF5File, the VOL and MPI VOL
readers, the HNSW loader and external VDS source files. File, MmapFile
and LazyFile gain user_block_size(). The new signature::split_user_block
returns the two parts, and Superblock::parse refuses a non-zero offset
(UserBlockNotStripped) so a format-level caller cannot silently apply
superblock-relative addresses to the whole file.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
A version-1 shared message (HDF5 1.6) embeds the target as a symbol-table
entry: after six reserved bytes comes a length-sized local-heap offset,
then the object header address. We read the heap offset as the address,
so datasets using a committed datatype in 1.6-era files (tcompound.h5,
tcompound2.h5) failed with InvalidObjectHeaderVersion. parse_shared_ref
now takes length_size and skips the offset, as libhdf5 does.
Resolving a reference also no longer falls back to the first message of
any type in the target header: a missing target message is
SharedMessageTargetMissing instead of garbage.
Fixture: tcompound.h5 from libhdf5's tools/test/testfiles (8 KiB).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
HDF5 1.6 encoded a compound member that is a fixed-size array through
legacy per-member fields (dimensionality, permutation, four dimension
sizes) that the v1 decoder skipped, so a [4] i32 member read as one i32
with the wrong size. Build the array type from those fields as libhdf5
does (ignoring the permutation) and refuse more than four dimensions.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
Elements of a virtual dataset that no mapping supplies (unmapped regions,
a missing source file, a missing source dataset) read as 0 instead of the
fill value libhdf5 returns — silent wrong data for any VDS created with a
non-zero fillvalue (read-matrix cases 0471/0472: -1 and 7 read as 0). A
missing source dataset was an error; libhdf5 reads it as fill.
Move VDS assembly into a new vds module following H5Dvirtual.c:
vds::read_virtual_dataset takes the dataset's fill value and a
VdsFileResolver that can refuse a name, and reports how many elements were
unmapped. Sources are read with their own fill value, and a source whose
datatype differs from the virtual dataset's is an error (libhdf5 converts).
File passes the dataset's fill value, resolves source names against the
virtual file's directory, and refuses names that leave it with an error
instead of reading them as fill. read_selection on a VDS goes through the
same fill-aware path.
The raw-read API (read_raw_data_full*) has no fill value, so it now errors
for a VDS with unmapped elements instead of guessing zeros.
Tests: vds_interop::vds_unmapped_regions_read_as_fill_value (external,
same-file, missing file/dataset, sparse source with its own fill, int
fill; earliest and latest format) and
vds_source_outside_directory_is_an_error_not_fill, both against h5py;
integration_test::v4_virtual_dataset_raw_api_refuses_to_guess_the_fill_value.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
attrs() read every attribute of an object through extract_attributes_full,
so one attribute it could not read (a corrupt or unsupported attribute
message, or a heap object it could not locate) failed all of them — the
same shape as the huge-object bug, where one 8 KiB attribute hid every
attribute on a NetCDF file's root group.
- clawhdf5-format: new attribute::extract_attributes_tolerant returns the
attributes it could read plus one error per attribute it could not.
Errors in the attribute index itself (Attribute Info message, dense
heap header, B-tree) still fail, since then it is unknown which
attributes exist. extract_attributes_full is unchanged (strict); both
share one implementation.
- clawhdf5: attrs() on Group/Dataset, MmapGroup/MmapDataset and
LazyGroup/LazyDataset leaves an unreadable attribute out (documented),
and the new attrs_with_errors() returns the map with the per-attribute
errors. A value is either returned complete or not at all.
Regression test: one_unreadable_attribute_does_not_hide_the_others (h5py
writes 11 dense attributes; one message's version byte is corrupted;
before: attrs() failed with InvalidAttributeVersion(127), after: the 10
others come back with their values and one error is reported).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
Group::datasets()/groups() (and the Mmap/Lazy handles) listed only hard
links, so a soft link to a dataset or group was missing, and dataset(name)
/ group(name) on a group handle could not open one. In old-style (symbol
table) groups a soft link's entry has no object header address, and the
listing failed outright trying to parse one.
The three facade handles each had their own copy of the child-listing
code; they now share group_v2::resolve_group_children, which returns hard
links plus soft links resolved to their targets (relative targets from
the group holding the link, via the new resolve_path_from). A dangling or
cyclic soft link, an external link and a user-defined link are left out —
h5py lists their names but cannot open them. Any other error met while
resolving is returned, not hidden.
Path resolution now walks a relative soft link's target from the group
holding it instead of rebuilding the path from the root (same result,
one less re-walk), and ignores "." components.
Regression test: soft_links_are_listed_as_their_targets (h5py writes
absolute, relative, group, dangling, cyclic and external links with
libver latest and earliest; listings compared with h5py for File,
MmapFile and LazyFile).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
With a 2.0 low version bound, libhdf5 stores the VDS mapping list as heap
block version 1: every entry starts with a flags byte (0x04 same file, no
file name; 0x01/0x02 file/dataset name shared with an earlier entry, whose
index is stored in place of the name). The parser treated only a leading
0x04 byte as special, so a 0x00 flags byte read as an empty (same-file)
name and shared names were read as garbage.
Decode it as H5D__virtual_load_layout does, refusing unknown flags,
forward references and block versions above 1.
Test: vds_interop::vds_mapping_block_version1_shared_names (h5py
libver=("v200","v200") with repeated long names; failed before with
"unknown dataspace selection type") plus the exact heap block as a unit
test.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
libhdf5 serializes a VDS hyperslab as version 1 (irregular, 4-byte block
corners) for the default format bounds, and as version 2 (regular, 8-byte)
for unlimited selections in the 1.10 format. Only version 3 was accepted,
so every h5py VDS written with default libver failed with "only version-3
hyperslab selections are supported" (5 libhdf5 test files in the sweep).
Decode all three versions following H5S__hyper_deserialize, including
irregular hyperslabs (a union of blocks, enumerated in row-major order as
libhdf5 iterates them) and the all-ones "unlimited" count/block marker.
SerializedSelection exposes the raw form for unlimited-mapping support.
Test: vds_interop::vds_version1_irregular_hyperslab_selections compares
default-libver h5py VDS reads (contiguous, strided and 2-D block mappings)
with libhdf5's values.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
Link types 65-255 are user-defined: their target is only meaningful to
the application that registered the link class. LinkMessage::parse
rejects them with InvalidLinkType, and group traversal propagated that,
so one such link made the whole group unlistable and every path through
it unresolvable (libhdf5's tall.h5 and tudlink.h5, class 187).
Group traversal (compact and dense) now leaves user-defined links out,
the way h5py leaves out links it cannot open; reserved types (2-63) are
still an error.
Regression test: user_defined_links_do_not_break_the_listing, on
libhdf5's own tools/test/testfiles tall.h5 and tudlink.h5 (BSD-style
HDF5 licence, 10 KB and 1 KB), committed as fixtures.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
A heap ID's type is in bits 4-5 of its first byte (H5HF_ID_TYPE_MASK
0x30); bits 6-7 are the ID version. The reader took the type from bits
6-7, so every huge object ID (0x10) was decoded as a managed one and
failed — and since dense attributes are read all at once, one attribute
over the heap's 4 KiB managed limit made every attribute on its object
unreadable (netcdf4-python's issue671.nc / issue672.nc).
- Huge objects (type 1): located directly from the ID when address and
length fit in it, otherwise through the huge-object v2 B-tree (record
types 1 and 2); filtered huge objects are decoded with the heap's
pipeline and their filter mask.
- Tiny objects (type 2): read from the ID itself.
- Filtered heaps: the header's pipeline is parsed (it was skipped short,
so the header checksum was read from the wrong place), indirect-block
entries for direct blocks carry their filtered size and mask, and
direct blocks are decoded before objects are read from them.
- An unknown ID version is an error.
FractalHeapHeader gains huge_btree_address, filter_pipeline,
root_direct_block_filtered_size, root_direct_block_filter_mask,
offset_size and length_size; read_managed_object now accepts any ID type.
Regression tests (h5py-written, compared with h5py):
dense_attribute_stored_as_a_huge_heap_object, dense_group_with_a_huge_link,
dense_group_with_a_filtered_link_heap; unit tests
tiny_object_is_read_from_the_id, huge_object_with_a_direct_id,
unknown_heap_id_version_is_refused.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
A version-1 shared message reference is version, type, six reserved bytes
and then an old-style symbol table entry: link-name offset (length size),
object header address, cache type, reserved, scratch. We read the address
straight after the reserved bytes, i.e. the link-name offset, and the
committed datatype lookup failed with InvalidObjectHeaderVersion (the bytes
checked in tcompound.h5: name offset 0x10, then 0x590 = /type1). Datasets
of 1.4/1.6-era files that use a committed datatype were unreadable.
Skip the name offset. parse_shared_ref has no length size, so add
parse_shared_ref_sized and use it in every internal caller;
parse_shared_ref keeps its signature and assumes length size == offset
size. The old parse_v1_ref unit test encoded the wrong layout and now uses
the real bytes.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
Compound datatype version 1 carries, per member, a dimensionality and four
dimension sizes (HDF5 before 1.4 had no array class). The parser skipped
those 28 bytes, so a member such as `f: f32[4]` came back as a single f32
at the member's offset: the compound's size was right but its members were
wrong. libhdf5 wraps such a member in an array type of the first
`dimensionality` sizes and ignores the permutation; do the same, and
reject a dimensionality above 4 as libhdf5 does.
Only files old enough to also use layout message v1 have these, so this
became reachable with the previous commit (tarrold.h5, tcompound.h5).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
HDF5 1.4/1.6-era files store the layout as version 1 or 2: version,
dimensionality, class, 5 reserved bytes, an address (contiguous and chunked
only), dimensionality 32-bit sizes (with the trailing element-size
dimension) and, for compact storage, a 32-bit size and the raw data. They
failed with InvalidLayoutVersion — 84 of the 686 files in the audit sweep,
205 datasets.
Map them onto the existing variants: chunked uses the same version-1
B-tree chunk index as version 3 and is reported as version 3, so every
chunked read path (filters, selections, caches) applies unchanged.
Contiguous size is the product of the stored dimensions, which is what
libhdf5 computes from the dataspace; a disagreement fails the reader's size
check instead of returning wrong data.
Fixtures are HDF5's own deflate.h5 (v1, chunked + deflate) and
h5ex_g_iterate.h5 (v2, contiguous, one unallocated dataset); the new
interop test compares every dataset byte for byte against h5py.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
An internal node's child pointer is an address, the child's record count
and (below the first internal level) the child subtree's total record
count. libhdf5 (H5B2__hdr_init) encodes the record count in the width of
a leaf's maximum and the subtree total in the width of cum_max_nrec for
that depth, computed level by level from the node size. The reader
guessed 2 * leaf_max and leaf_max^depth, which agree at depth 2 but not
at depth 3: a 24 000-link group's name index has depth 3, its root's
pointers were read 3 bytes wide instead of 2, and listing failed with a
garbage heap offset.
Regression tests: dense_group_with_a_three_level_name_index (h5py writes
24 000 links; listing compared with h5py) and
subtree_capacity_matches_libhdf5.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
A child indirect block in row r of a fractal heap's doubling table spans
that row's block size of heap space, so it has
log2(size) - log2(start_block_size * width) + 1 rows (libhdf5's
H5HF__dtable_size_to_rows). The reader used row - first_indirect_row + 1,
which undercounts, so every object stored past the root block's direct
rows (512 KiB with libhdf5's defaults) was unreachable: dense groups with
a few thousand long link names, or ~20 000 short ones, could not be listed.
Regression test: dense_group_whose_heap_outgrows_the_root_direct_rows
(h5py writes 2 500 links with 248-byte names; listing compared with h5py).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
CHANGELOG: upgrade notes (changed read results for max-shape files,
saturating conversions, new writer errors, format-crate API changes) and
the reader/writer correctness fixes. known-issues: the silent-wrong-data
table with before/after sweep numbers, the gaps still open, and a
correction to the Extensible Array entry, which said files we wrote were
unaffected. CLAUDE.md: clawhdf5-gpu is vector distance computation, not
I/O, and clawhdf5-filters holds only deflate backends (no Blosc).
Also a facade test that libhdf5's 20-bit N-Bit float test data reads as
libhdf5's values.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
CLAUDE.md said ZeroClaw "imports this as a Cargo feature (clawhdf5
feature flag)" and uses clawhdf5 as its memory backend; the agent crate
called itself the "ZeroClaw agent memory HDF5 backend"; the migrator
claimed to read "the ZeroClaw layout". Checked on 2026-09-25 against
ZeroClaw v0.8.5 (its latest release), the osobh/zeroclaw fork (on
v0.8.5) and both histories back to February 2026:
- no `clawhdf5` feature, dependency or memory backend has ever existed
in ZeroClaw; its backends are sqlite, lucid, postgres, qdrant,
markdown and none, behind its own `Memory` trait;
- ZeroClaw's SQLite schema is a single `memories` table (id, key,
content, category, embedding, created_at, updated_at); the
migrator's memory_chunks/sessions/entities/relations layout never
existed in ZeroClaw, so it cannot read a ZeroClaw database.
Decision: withdraw the claims (as with OpenClaw); clawhdf5 is a
standalone library with no framework integration. The migrator's
default layout is documented as its own. ZEROCLAW_VERSION keeps its name
and value (it is the persisted `edgehdf5_version` writer tag) with a
doc comment saying it is unrelated to ZeroClaw.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
The docs described a "drop-in" OpenClaw memory backend enabled with
`memory.backend = "clawhdf5"`. Checked against OpenClaw's source and
docs (v2026.2.26 through v2026.9.6): that config was never valid —
v2026.2-v2026.7 accepted only "builtin"/"qmd" and rejected unknown
keys, so a Gateway given it refuses to start, and v2026.8.1 (OpenClaw
2.0) removed the key. No plugin was ever built (no manifest, no
registration, no tools), nothing was tested against OpenClaw, the
linked github.com/redclawsystems/openclaw is a 404, and
@redclaw/clawhdf5 was never published.
Decision (2026-09-25): not pursuing an OpenClaw plugin for now; ZeroClaw
is the integration target.
- Remove openclaw-integration.md, openclaw-config.md and
migration-guide.md; add docs/openclaw.md: the status, what a memory
plugin needs against v2026.9.6 (plugins.slots.memory, manifest with
kind "memory", registerMemoryCapability / MemorySearchManager,
prebuilt native packages), and what this repo has as building blocks.
- README, QUICKSTART, USE_CASES, ROADMAP (Track 7 withdrawn), CLAUDE.md
and the `openclaw` module docs describe ClawhdfBackend as what it is:
a Markdown-oriented library backend, not an OpenClaw plugin. The
QUICKSTART example is corrected (the old one called a three-argument
create that does not exist) and states its limits.
- packages/clawhdf5-node: marked unpublished and broken, "private": true
so it cannot be published by accident; its bugs (snake_case vs
camelCase fields, wrong addon path, no way to store an embedding,
wrong WAL name) are recorded in docs/known-issues.md.
- Two broken rustdoc links fixed along the way.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
It enabled nothing — the agent layer is always built — yet the README,
QUICKSTART and USE_CASES told people to pass it. Removed, with those
snippets fixed: they now depend on the git repository (nothing is on
crates.io, so `version = "2.0"` never resolved) and USE_CASES no longer
presents the `float16` feature as half-precision storage (that is
MemoryConfig::float16, on by default for new stores).
Breaking for anyone passing `features = ["agent"]`: drop it.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
Two write-side bugs, both present in every release (the first at least
since v2.1.0), made libhdf5 refuse files written by clawhdf5. Our own
reader ignores both fields, and the interop suites only ever wrote f64
from our side, so nothing here caught them.
- Every f32 dataset: "sign bit position out of bounds". The float
datatype encoder hard-coded the sign bit's position (bits 8-15 of the
class bit field) to 63, which is right only for f64. It is now derived
from the type: bit_offset + bit_precision - 1. This covered every
agent store's embeddings, norms and activation weights.
- Every empty dataset: "invalid dataset size, likely file corruption".
It was written with a real address and size 0, which trips libhdf5's
`addr + size <= addr` overflow check. An empty contiguous dataset now
gets the undefined address, as libhdf5 writes it. This covered every
agent store without sessions or a knowledge graph.
Agent stores are rewritten in full at each checkpoint, so they become
readable at their next checkpoint on a fixed build; other files with f32
or empty datasets need rewriting. Both are recorded in
docs/known-issues.md.
Tests: the sign position byte for f32/f64, and h5py reading our f32
datasets (plain and chunked + deflate) bit for bit.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
The README had fallen behind v2.3.0-v2.7.0, and parts of it were not
true. Checked every claim against the code and BENCHMARKS.md:
- Three of the six Quick Start snippets no longer compiled (Agent
Memory, Consolidation, OpenClaw); all six now do.
- Hybrid search was described as RRF throughout. The default has been
weighted 0.4/0.6 fusion since v2.5.0; re-ranking and confidence
rejection run only in the OpenClaw backend.
- The `float16` feature does not halve embedding storage (the store
always writes f32), `--features agent` enables nothing, "Source
Isolation" is not wired in, and nothing backs "billion-scale" IVF-PQ.
- "Cryptographically verifiable" overstated an unkeyed, session-scoped
FNV-1a ledger; "Zero C dependencies" was false while zlib-ng was the
default deflate backend.
- Stale numbers: tests (1,650 -> 1,868), Rust badge (1.75 is below
edition 2024's floor), 6.5 KB/record on disk (BENCHMARKS.md: 1.7 KB),
consolidation and hybrid-search latency, and a feature-flag table
broken by a paragraph pasted into it.
- The file schema, module table and crate map now match the code.
Adds a "What's new (v2.2 -> v2.7)" section for collaborators, leading
with the silent Extensible Array read bug fixed in v2.7.0. Footer links
point at git.redclaw.dev. CLAUDE.md: clawhdf5-migrate is the SQLite
migration tool, and MemoryConfig::compression is off by default.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
`MemoryConfig::quantized_index` now defaults to `true`. It holds a
quarter of the index memory and, with the exact re-score, is faster at
equal recall on every configuration measured: 1.63x the queries per
second on x86-64 (AVX2) and 1.18x on a Raspberry Pi 5 (NEON SDOT), with
builds 1.8x and 2.3x faster. The one argument for keeping it off — that
int8 search was slower on ARM — did not survive being measured.
Existing stores do not change. A store written with v2.6.0 or later
keeps its persisted setting. One written before the setting existed has
no stored value, and it loads as `false` rather than as the new default,
so reopening it never changes how its index is held. That case is
guarded by a real store written with the v2.5.0 CLI, committed as
`tests/fixtures/store_v2_5_0.h5` (6.8 KB): the test asserts it reopens
with an f32 index and still searches, and it fails if the load default
is changed to `true`.
The CLI needed more than a new default. `create --quantized-index`
assigned its value straight into the config, so under the new default
every CLI-created store would have been forced back to f32 unless the
caller knew to ask for int8. It is replaced by `--f32-index`, which only
ever switches the default off; `--quantized-index` is still accepted,
hidden, as a no-op, and the two conflict.
The whole agent suite passes under the new default, including the
brute-force recall oracle, now running on int8 plus re-score without
being asked to.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
A dataset with exactly one unlimited dimension — the ordinary
append-only case — is indexed by an Extensible Array. Only its first
few chunk entries (4 by default) sit inline in the index block, and
everything past them was read with the wrong layout. In the default
shape the 37th chunk onward came back from the wrong place: a
400-chunk dataset returned 364 wrong values while reporting success,
and beyond about a thousand chunks the read failed outright. Silently
wrong data is the worse half of that.
It survived because the only Extensible Array fixture in the suite had
three chunks — inside the inline limit — so no test ever reached a data
block.
Four layout errors, each confirmed against files written by HDF5 2.0 and
against the library source rather than inferred:
- super block `u` owns 2^(u/2) data blocks, not 2^u;
- each holds 2^((u+1)/2) * data_blk_min_elmts elements — the two
quantities double every *other* level, a half step apart;
- a super block carries a block-offset field before its data block
addresses, which was not skipped;
- the page-init bitmap belongs to the super block, one bit per page
packed across all of its data blocks and read MSB-first, rather than
living inside the data block; a paged data block also ends its prefix
with a checksum before the first page.
Where the spec left room for doubt the file settled it: decoding a
paged block's elements and reading the chunk values they address
identifies the mapping exactly, and the bitmap's 68 set bits matched
the 34 data blocks x 2 pages that 200 000 elements need, which only
holds MSB-first.
New interop tests cross every boundary — 4, 37, 400, 5 000 and 200 000
chunks, the last with paged data blocks — plus sparse (uninitialised
pages taking fill values), gzip-filtered elements and a 2-D dataset.
All three fail against the old traversal.
Writing is untouched; this was a read-path bug.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
Traversal recursed one frame per level with the depth taken from the
file (a u16), and followed child addresses without asking whether they
were shared. Two crafted inputs, both reproduced before fixing:
- A node listing itself as its own child, under a header claiming 65 535
levels, overflowed the stack and aborted the process — SIGABRT, not an
error a caller can handle — from under 100 bytes.
- Levels whose children all point at one shared node below reached it
fan-out^depth times: 29.5 million records in 8 s from ~5 KB, and one
more level would exhaust memory.
Depth is now capped at 64, as the fractal heap already was; no real tree
approaches it, since even at the minimum fan-out of two that is over
2^64 records. And traversal stops once it has produced more records
than the file has bytes to hold them — a valid tree stores each record
once in its own bytes, so this bounds shared subtrees without trusting
the header's own `total_records`. Both inputs now fail in under a
millisecond.
Every B-tree v2 user goes through this collector: dense attributes, v2
groups, shared messages and chunk indexes. To show the budget never
refuses a real file, a new interop test has HDF5 2.0 write a depth-2
chunk index with 40 000 records and reads back all 160 000 values; it
fails when the budget is deliberately made too tight.
Also corrects `BM25Index::search`, which claimed to use Block-Max WAND.
It scores exhaustively, and pruning would not help the store:
`hybrid_search` needs every score because fusion normalises over them.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
