u/aegismuzuz

Hey everyone. Our team recently open-sourced YaFF (Yet Another Flat Format), a C++ serialization library that provides a zero-copy wire format for the Protobuf ecosystem

Why we built it:

In read-heavy, high-load paths, Protobuf parsing and deserialization can become a high CPU cost. Developers often look at FlatBuffers for zero-copy reads, but adopting it into an existing Protobuf-heavy codebase means dealing with separate schema/API layers and extra conversion logic.

What YaFF does:

YaFF keeps .proto files as the contract, but changes the physical representation of your data. You get close to native C++-structs while keeping your existing .proto files as your source of truth. You get zero-copy performance without abandoning the Protobuf ecosystem.

Some technical details:

• written in C++ and designed for server-side runtimes
• supports mmap compatable layouts for large local indexes and faster startup
• mitigates accessor-chain overhead related to alias analysis with immutable buffers and gnu::pure annotations
• easy to integrate via CMake or Conan

The project is still early (C++ only for now, other languages are on the roadmap). We're open to issues, pull requests, and any feedback from the community.

Source code and Quick Start: https://github.com/yandex/yaff

Happy to answer any technical questions in the comments!