ABIspesifi

ABIspesifi is a proposed framework for documenting and validating application binary interfaces (ABIs) across software platforms to improve portability and interoperability. It aims to provide a formal, language-agnostic specification language and a central registry of ABI definitions that describe calling conventions, data type layouts, name mangling, alignment, and runtime requirements in a platform-neutral way. The term combines ABI with 'spesifi', a stylized form of specification.

Origin and development: The concept emerged in the open-source and standards communities engaged in cross-language and cross-architecture interoperability. While not an official standard, ABIspesifi has been discussed as a blueprint for tooling, documentation practices, and automated validation.

Core components include a specification language called Spesifi-Lang for describing ABI rules, a definition registry to store platform-specific ABI records, and validation tooling that can compare a software module against a target ABI to detect incompatibilities. It also outlines versioning and compatibility policies.

Key features are machine-readable schemas, platform dictionaries, and conformance tests. The framework emphasizes backward compatibility, clear migration paths, and an auditable change log for ABI evolution across products and libraries.

Applications cover plugin ecosystems, cross-language interfaces, embedded systems, and operating-system abstractions. In practice, ABIspesifi would enable automated checks for ABI drift during builds and releases and facilitate reproducible builds across environments.

Governance is described as an open, community-driven effort with a lightweight approval workflow and a public registry. Adoption remains limited and largely exploratory, with several prototype implementations and tooling in development.

See also: Application binary interface, API specification, compatibility testing.