Fills four documentation gaps surfaced by the doc audit:
1. README "Documentation map" was missing VERIFICATION.md (the file
that backs the proof-of-feature-completeness claims) and is now
pointing at the new files added in this commit too — ARCHITECTURE,
GLOSSARY, FAQ, examples/pvd_tool/ (the last two land next).
2. interop/README.md only documented secsgem-py. Three of the five
external validators (tshark, secs4j, libFuzzer) plus the E5 KAT
were invisible from the directory's own README. Rewritten as a
complete index — what's external, what each catches, how to run,
what bugs they've already surfaced, when to add a new validator.
3. GLOSSARY.md is new. Every SEMI acronym used in the codebase or
the docs gets one row: SVID, DVID, CEID, RPTID, ALID, ECID, PPID,
MID, CARRIERID, PRJOBID, CTLJOBID, SUBSTID, OBJSPEC, OBJTYPE,
MDLN, SOFTREV, EQPTYP, DATAID + every ACK code (COMMACK, ONLACK,
OFLACK, HCACK, CMDA, ACKC5-7-10, DRACK, LRACK, ERACK, EAC, TIACK,
GRANT, ALCD, OBJACK) + stream/function shorthand + HSMS terms +
T-timers + E84 signals + the standards lineup + codebase shortcuts
("the model", "the router", "the proof", etc.). Cuts week-1
onboarding time.
4. FAQ.md is new. Canonical answers to the questions that come up
once per integration: why HSMS unencrypted, SVID vs DVID, PJ vs
CJ, who fires FSM transitions, what runs on which thread, how to
add a new SECS-II message, ASCII vs Binary, common MES quirks,
how spool works, robustness fuzz vs libFuzzer, conformance vs
interop, what's not implemented.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 <noreply@anthropic.com>
External cross-validation harnesses
Every harness in this directory exists so a reviewer doesn't have to take our word for it. Each one validates our C++ codec / framing / dispatch against an independent third-party implementation that read the SEMI standards without talking to us.
See ../VERIFICATION.md for the full test plan
and the honest accounting of which proofs are external vs internal.
What's here
| Validator | Independence | Coverage |
|---|---|---|
host_vs_cpp_server.py + passive_equipment.py |
secsgem-py 0.3.0 — Python reference impl | ~24 + 4 checks: S1, S2, S5, S6, S7, S10 happy paths |
raw_gem300_harness.py |
secsgem-py with hand-crafted SecsStreamFunctions | 3 checks: S3F17, S16F5, S16F27 (limited by SFDL grammar) |
secs4j/Secs4jHostHarness.java |
secs4java8 — Apache 2.0 Java impl by kenta-shimizu | 55 checks across S1/S2/S3/S5/S6/S7/S10/S14/S16, including the full E40 body that defeated secsgem-py and unsolicited S6F11/S5F1 observation |
tshark_validate.sh |
Wireshark's built-in HSMS dissector | 69 captured frames dissected with no malformed-packet warnings |
spool_persistence_test.py |
secsgem-py + a docker-restart loop | Restart-survives-spool integrity |
⚙️ ../tests/test_e5_kat.cpp |
SEMI E5 §9 encoding rules | 196 known-answer byte assertions across every format code |
⚙️ ../apps/fuzz_secs2_decode.cpp + fuzz_sml_parse.cpp |
libFuzzer + ASan + UBSan | ~70 000 + ~285 000 random inputs per minute, 0 crashes |
The ⚙️ entries aren't in interop/ directly because they don't
involve a network peer — they're either pure codec round-trips
(KAT) or coverage-guided fuzzing. Listed here so the full external
proof inventory lives in one place.
Running each validator
secsgem-py — secsgem-py active host → C++ server
docker compose up -d server
docker compose run --rm interop python3 /app/interop/host_vs_cpp_server.py \
--host server --port 5000 --session-id 0
secsgem-py — C++ host → secsgem-py equipment
docker compose up -d equipment_py
docker compose run --rm builder /app/build/secs_interop_probe \
--host equipment_py --port 5000 --device 0
secsgem-py — raw GEM 300 frames
docker compose up -d server
docker compose run --rm interop python3 /app/interop/raw_gem300_harness.py \
--host server --port 5000 --session-id 0
secs4j — independent Java host → C++ server
bash interop/secs4j_validate.sh
Builds an eclipse-temurin:21-jdk sidecar with secs4java8 cloned +
compiled at image build, then drives 55 checks against
compose up server. See secs4j/Secs4jHostHarness.java for the
list and secs4j/Dockerfile for the build.
tshark — Wireshark HSMS dissector
docker compose run --rm builder bash /app/interop/tshark_validate.sh
Captures a pcap of the demo flow, runs tshark -V with the HSMS
dissector forced for the test port, asserts no malformed packets +
that all expected control/data frames parse.
spool persistence — restart-survives test
bash interop/spool_persistence_test.py
Drops the host link mid-flight, kills the server, restarts it, and asserts the spooled S5F1 / S6F11 frames drain to the host on reconnect.
What these harnesses caught
Real bugs surfaced during interop development (now fixed):
-
Strict U-width parsing rejected U1-encoded identifiers. SEMI E5 declares DATAID, RPTID, VID, CEID, ALID, EXID etc. as
U1 | U2 | U4 | U8; secsgem-py picks the smallest width that fits. Our scalar accessors were strict. Now lenient with range-checked downcasts (messages_helpers.hpp::any_unsigned_first). -
PPBODY rejected when sent as ASCII. SEMI allows PPBODY to be
ASCII | Binary | List; secsgem-py defaults to ASCII. Added theBINARY_OR_ASCIIcodegen type and theas_text_or_binaryaccessor. -
Missing S1F23 / S1F24 (Collection Event Namelist). Added the wire schema, the
vids_for(ceid)accessor, and the dispatch handler. -
Missing S10F3 handler (host→equipment Terminal Display). Our server only registered S10F1; per SEMI E5 §13 those are opposite directions. Added the missing dispatch.
-
TSan use-after-free in
act_exception_complete(test code, not library): held a pointer acrossfire_internal(RecoveryComplete)which deletes the entry. Found by the ThreadSanitizer lane on first run.
The C++ test suite stayed green through every one of these fixes — the changes were purely permissive widenings or additive features, no existing behaviour broke.
When to add a new validator
A new third-party SECS implementation, or a new dissector, or a new fuzzer target — anything that exercises our wire surface from an angle the existing five don't cover — is worth adding. The pattern is consistent:
- New script / harness lives here (or a sidecar Docker context for non-Python validators).
- Wired into
.gitea/workflows/ci.ymlas a separate job. - Listed in this README's table + in
../VERIFICATION.md. - Surfaced in the README's proof-of-feature-completeness table if it adds a meaningful new dimension.
Bug reports from a new validator → file at
raphael@maenle.net with the wire trace, the validator's output,
and the equipment YAML so we can reproduce.