feat(signaling): extract a one-method transport seam (C7) #59

Merged
triform-admin merged 1 commit from c7/transport-seam into main 2026-07-30 21:23:02 +00:00

C7 / Track 4 — the last item on the OSS plan. ⚠ Unverified C++ — build queued behind C5.

The escape hatch for anyone whose broker is not a chromium-network-service WebSocket. Today SignalingWsClient is the only way an envelope can leave this peer. That is a fine default and stays the default — but it is not a reasonable requirement to impose on a third party, or on a test that wants to drive the offerer without a network stack.

One virtual. That's the whole interface.

class SignalingTransport {
  virtual bool Send(const Envelope&) = 0;
};

The plan said "SignalingWsClient already has the exact four methods", implying a four-virtual extraction. I checked what the consumer actually uses rather than copying the class surface:

cb_offerer_driver.cc calls exactly one method — Send() — at four sites (788, 809, 818, 1192). Connect, Disconnect, is_connected, is_closing are called only by the embedder, which owns the concrete client anyway and needs no abstraction to reach it.

Exporting all six would also leak implementation detail into a contract third parties then depend on: SendText exists so tests can inject malformed frames, which is not something a transport contract should promise. Adding a second virtual later is a smaller change than removing four that were never used.

Two deliberate omissions

Inbound is not here. Envelopes arrive via SignalingClientObserver, which is already abstract and already the seam for that direction. Duplicating it would create two ways to say one thing.

The from-rewrite is stated as a contract obligation, not pretended to be enforceable. SignalingWsClient::Send rewrites from to kBrowser before emitting, and the broker rewrites server-side too — so an implementation forwarding a caller-supplied from verbatim disagrees with both. An interface can't enforce that; it can at least say so, which the header does.

Wiring

  • SignalingWsClient : public SignalingTransport, Send() becomes override
  • CbOffererDriver takes and stores SignalingTransport*
  • header joins the :cb_wire_envelope target — same kind of artifact (pure contract, no I/O), and its only dependency is that codec, so a separate source_set would be a target with no .cc and one dep

Verification

make verify, cxx-include-lint clean (122 files) · compiles: unverified

Stacked on verify/c4-with-tests for the same reason as #58.

C7 / Track 4 — the last item on the OSS plan. **⚠ Unverified C++** — build queued behind C5. The escape hatch for anyone whose broker is not a chromium-network-service WebSocket. Today `SignalingWsClient` is the *only* way an envelope can leave this peer. That is a fine default and stays the default — but it is not a reasonable **requirement** to impose on a third party, or on a test that wants to drive the offerer without a network stack. ## One virtual. That's the whole interface. ```cpp class SignalingTransport { virtual bool Send(const Envelope&) = 0; }; ``` The plan said *"SignalingWsClient already has the exact four methods"*, implying a four-virtual extraction. I checked what the consumer actually uses rather than copying the class surface: **`cb_offerer_driver.cc` calls exactly one method — `Send()` — at four sites** (788, 809, 818, 1192). `Connect`, `Disconnect`, `is_connected`, `is_closing` are called only by the embedder, which owns the concrete client anyway and needs no abstraction to reach it. Exporting all six would also leak implementation detail into a contract third parties then depend on: `SendText` exists so tests can inject malformed frames, which is not something a transport contract should promise. **Adding a second virtual later is a smaller change than removing four that were never used.** ## Two deliberate omissions **Inbound is not here.** Envelopes arrive via `SignalingClientObserver`, which is already abstract and already the seam for that direction. Duplicating it would create two ways to say one thing. **The `from`-rewrite is stated as a contract obligation, not pretended to be enforceable.** `SignalingWsClient::Send` rewrites `from` to `kBrowser` before emitting, and the broker rewrites server-side too — so an implementation forwarding a caller-supplied `from` verbatim disagrees with both. An interface can't enforce that; it can at least say so, which the header does. ## Wiring - `SignalingWsClient : public SignalingTransport`, `Send()` becomes `override` - `CbOffererDriver` takes and stores `SignalingTransport*` - header joins the `:cb_wire_envelope` target — same kind of artifact (pure contract, no I/O), and its only dependency *is* that codec, so a separate `source_set` would be a target with no `.cc` and one dep ## Verification ✅ `make verify`, `cxx-include-lint` clean (122 files) · ❌ compiles: unverified Stacked on `verify/c4-with-tests` for the same reason as #58.
The build I fired to prove cb_wire_envelope_unittests passes did not get that
far — it failed to COMPILE the test, with:

  FAILED: cb_wire_envelope_test.o
  ../../base/memory/raw_ptr_exclusion.h:11:10: fatal error:
    'partition_alloc/pointers/raw_ptr_exclusion.h' file not found

Root cause: :cb_wire_envelope listed //base in private `deps`. But
cb_wire_envelope.h includes "base/values.h" in its PUBLIC interface
(ProbeResultPayload holds a base::DictValue), so any target that includes
that header needs //base's include dirs transitively — and //base is what
pulls in partition_alloc's generated headers. The source_set itself compiled
fine (it sees //base directly); only DEPENDENTS broke. With no dependent
building, nothing could observe it.

That is gn's deps-vs-public_deps distinction exactly: a dep whose headers
appear in your own public headers is part of your interface, not an
implementation detail.

Then the obvious question — is this one target or a class? Scanned every
source_set in capture/ for "public header includes base/ AND //base is a
private dep". NINETEEN targets, including:

  pointer_state, input_dispatch_ime, input_dispatch_touch,
  input_dispatch_drag, input_dispatch_clipboard, cursor_client,
  cursor_xy_join, embedder, framesink_capture, stats_relay,
  clipboard_relay, file_upload_relay, active_webcontents_resolver,
  cb_audio_lifecycle, cb_signaling_ws_client, cb_offerer_driver,
  cb_dc_host, cb_signaling_reconnect, cb_wire_envelope

Note which names appear there: pointer_state and input_dispatch. Their test
binaries — cloud_browser_pointer_state_unittests,
cloud_browser_input_dispatch_unittests — are two of the five that have never
been built in any lane. This is very likely why: whoever last tried to add
them hit this same wall and dropped the target rather than the dep. I cannot
prove that from here (no record of the attempt), but the shape matches.

All nineteen moved to public_deps. The worker binary links them all
transitively either way, which is why nothing was broken in production — the
defect is only visible to a target that depends on ONE of them in isolation,
i.e. a unit test. That is the whole point of unit tests having narrow deps,
and it is why this stayed hidden while the tests stayed unbuilt.

Verified locally: brace/bracket balance on both BUILD.gn files, no target
left with //base in both deps and public_deps, re-scan reports zero remaining
affected targets, make verify + cxx-include-lint clean.
NOT verified: that it compiles. A t7 build follows — that is the point.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Found while verifying C4's t7 build: my new wire-envelope tests COMPILED and
never executed. Neither did the ones that were already there — including the
negative test whose own comment says it exists "so a maintainer has to argue
the contract change explicitly". I cited that test as a guarantee earlier
today. It has never run in this lane.

Two independent gaps, same shape:

1. CHROMELESS_BUILD_TARGETS named two unittest targets. The tree declares
   SEVEN:
     cb_wire_envelope_unittests              <- never built
     cloud_browser_adm_unittests             <- never built
     cloud_browser_encoder_unittests         built
     cloud_browser_framesink_capturer_unittests  built
     cloud_browser_input_dispatch_unittests  <- never built
     cloud_browser_pcf_unittests             (t2-only, deliberate)
     cloud_browser_pointer_state_unittests   <- never built
   Earlier today I restored encoder+framesink to close a 10-week silent-skip
   and did not notice I was restoring a two-item list into a seven-item tree.

2. STEP 7 invoked those two binaries BY NAME. So even adding a target to the
   lane would have changed nothing here — it would build and sit there. The
   mismatch is invisible: the build goes green either way. That is the same
   failure shape as the silent-skip STEP 7's fatal-on-missing check was added
   to close, one level up — there the binary was absent, here it exists and
   nobody invokes it.

STEP 7 now DERIVES the list from CHROMELESS_BUILD_TARGETS (any label whose
target name ends in _unittests), so a target added to the lane is
automatically executed and cannot drift out of the runner again. The existing
fatal-on-missing behaviour is preserved and now applies to every derived
binary; a lane with no test targets at all logs a loud WARN rather than
passing silently.

Adds cb_wire_envelope_unittests to the x264-t7 lane. That is the contract this
repo publishes to third parties, so it is the one that most needs to run. The
other three unbuilt targets (adm, input_dispatch, pointer_state) are NOT added
here: nothing has compiled them in ~10 weeks, they may have bitrotted, and
finding that out is its own change rather than something to discover while
landing a codec fix.

Verified locally (this part is shell, so it is verifiable without Chromium):
bash -n clean, and the derivation exercised against a realistic target string
— picks exactly the two _unittests labels, correctly ignores
cloud_browser_worker and headless:resource_pack_data.

NOT verified: that cb_wire_envelope_unittests passes. A t7 build is running to
find out; that is the entire point of the change.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
fix(build): local outside a function killed STEP 7 silently — plus a lint
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18fa878fa9
My own bug, from the previous commit on this branch. The STEP 7 rewrite used

    local -a test_binaries=()

inside an `if` block at SCRIPT TOP LEVEL. bash rejects that outright:

    bash: local: can only be used in a function

Under `set -e` the step aborts instantly and — the expensive part — prints
NOTHING of its own. The log reads:

    === STEP 6/10 autoninja OK (745s) ===
    === STEP 7/10 unit tests START ===
    <end of file>

which looks exactly like an infrastructure kill. I spent the first pass
chasing reapers, node pressure and hostPath contention before reading my own
diff. The compile had SUCCEEDED; only my four extra characters failed.

`bash -n` does not catch this. It is a runtime error, not a syntax error, so
the script passed every check I ran locally and the real feedback took 27
minutes of t7 build to arrive.

Two changes:

1. Drop the three `local` keywords. Top-level variables are already global;
   the keyword bought nothing. Verified every remaining `local` in the file
   is genuinely inside a function.

2. tools/lint/shell_toplevel_local_lint.py — because "a four-character
   mistake costs a quarter hour of Chromium" is exactly the feedback-loop
   gap this repo's lint directory exists to close, and it is the same
   argument that produced lint-cxx (a missing #include surfacing hours later
   in an unwatched lane).

   Checked against the whole tree before landing, per CONTRIBUTING: clean on
   all 35 shell scripts, and confirmed to FAIL on the real bug by
   reintroducing it on a copy. It tracks brace depth, handles both function
   syntaxes, and skips heredoc bodies so `local` appearing as text in an
   embedded script is not flagged.

Wired into CI's Lint job next to the other host-runnable checks.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
⚠ UNVERIFIED C++ — capture/ cannot be compiled here (no local Chromium; a
build is 4-8h cold). A t7 build is running against this branch; do not merge
until it is green.

The research first, because the original plan was wrong about two things:

1. Physics is NOT a second dialect. webrtc_signaling.rs's SignalingEnvelope
   is #[serde(tag="type", rename_all="snake_case")] over variants Offer /
   Answer / Ice / …, so it emits exactly "offer", "answer", "ice" — byte
   identical to this codec's accept-list. The `sdp_offer` strings in that
   file are LOG LABELS (lines 1072, 1096), not wire tags. The plan's
   "delete physics's serde aliases" step has nothing to delete.

2. The PORTAL is the real second dialect, and it is genuinely incompatible.
   portal/src/canvas/browser_screencast_webrtc.rs:48-53:

       {"type":"sdp_offer",     "sdp":"v=0..."}
       {"type":"sdp_answer",    "sdp":"v=0..."}
       {"type":"ice_candidate", "candidate":"...", "sdpMid":"0", …}

   Flat: no `from`, payload inlined as siblings of `type`. Decode() rejected
   it on all three counts. It works today only because physics translates in
   the middle (pattern_c_envelope_to_portal_msg, screencast_ws.rs:6909).

This change teaches Decode() the flat dialect and normalizes it to the same
Envelope struct. Encode is untouched: we still always EMIT canonical, because
an emitter that picked a dialect per-peer would need to know which peer it is
addressing, which this codec deliberately does not.

What this does NOT do, stated because the plan implied otherwise: it does not
make pattern_c_envelope_to_portal_msg deletable. That translator is LOSSY in
the other direction — it returns None for bye, request_renegotiate,
probe_result and session_unhealthy, so those four tags never reach the portal
at all. Removing it needs the portal to learn those tags first. "Liberalize
the decoder" and "delete the translator" are two changes, not one.

Design notes:

* PortalTagFromString is a SEPARATE function from TagFromString, and the
  test asserts the two tag spaces stay disjoint. Decode() consults both;
  that is where the widening lives. Keeping it out of TagFromString is what
  stops "canonical" quietly becoming "anything we accept".

* The accept-list stays CLOSED — three tags wider, not open. A new negative
  test uses `restart_ice`, well-formed in every respect except its tag.

* `from` is absent in this dialect and is inferred as kClient. That is a
  statement (the portal is the browser-facing UI and the only producer of
  these frames), not a default — a future flat-but-not-client producer must
  send canonical instead. Callers do switch on `from`, so leaving it
  indeterminate was not an option.

* A flat `ice_candidate` with no `candidate` field is the end-of-candidates
  marker: canonical says that with `data: null`, which has no flat
  equivalent because the payload IS the frame.

The old RejectsHistoricSdpOfferTag test called sdp_offer "the historic v0
tag" and existed so that flipping the contract required an explicit argument
rather than a quiet edit. The framing was wrong on the facts — it is neither
historic nor v0, it is live — and this commit is that argument, made in the
place the tripwire pointed at.

conformance/suites/signaling-wire.mjs moves in lockstep: sdp_offer leaves
REJECTED_TAGS for a new PORTAL_TAGS export. Without that the kit would
assert the opposite of the code it ships beside.

Verified locally: make verify passes, cxx-include-lint clean (121 files),
conformance 23/23. NOT verified: that any of this compiles.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
There was no envelope spec in docs/protocols/ — cb_wire_envelope.h was the
only description, which was defensible while there was exactly one dialect
and the audience was people with the tree open. C4 adds a second, and "read
the C++" is not reasonable advice for someone implementing a peer against
this project from outside.

Documents both forms, the closed accept-list, and the one thing a new
implementation is most likely to get wrong (accepting an unknown tag is
invisible until it meets a peer that assumes the documented behaviour).

Also records the known gap the code comments carry: physics's
pattern_c_envelope_to_portal_msg drops bye / request_renegotiate /
probe_result / session_unhealthy, so liberalizing this decoder does not on
its own make that translator deletable.

Header stays authoritative; the doc says so explicitly.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
feat(signaling): extract a one-method transport seam (C7)
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8bf0c99ea2
⚠ UNVERIFIED C++ — a t7 build follows.

The escape hatch for anyone whose broker is not a chromium-network-service
WebSocket. Today SignalingWsClient is the only way an envelope can leave this
peer; that is a fine default and stays the default, but it is not a reasonable
REQUIREMENT to impose on a third party — or on a test that wants to drive the
offerer without a network stack.

ONE virtual method. That is the whole interface:

    class SignalingTransport {
      virtual bool Send(const Envelope&) = 0;
    };

The plan described this as "SignalingWsClient already has the exact four
methods", implying a four-virtual interface. I checked what the consumer
actually uses instead of copying the class surface: cb_offerer_driver.cc calls
exactly ONE method, Send(), at four sites (788, 809, 818, 1192). Connect,
Disconnect, is_connected and is_closing are called only by the embedder — the
code that owns the concrete client anyway and needs no abstraction to reach it.

Exporting all six would also leak implementation detail into a contract third
parties then depend on: SendText exists so tests can inject malformed frames,
which is not something a transport contract should promise. Adding a second
virtual later is a smaller change than removing four that were never used.

Inbound is deliberately NOT in this interface. Envelopes arrive through
SignalingClientObserver, which is already abstract and already the seam for
that direction; duplicating it here would create two ways to say one thing.

The `from`-rewrite requirement is stated as a contract obligation on the
comment rather than pretended to be enforceable: SignalingWsClient::Send
rewrites `from` to kBrowser before emitting, the broker rewrites server-side
too, and an implementation that forwards a caller-supplied `from` verbatim
will disagree with both. An interface cannot enforce that; it can at least
say it.

Wiring: SignalingWsClient now `: public SignalingTransport`, its Send() is an
`override`, and CbOffererDriver takes/stores SignalingTransport* instead of
SignalingWsClient*. The header joins the :cb_wire_envelope target — it is the
same kind of artifact (a pure contract, no I/O) and its only dependency IS
that codec, so a separate source_set would be a target with no .cc and one
dep.

Verified locally: make verify, cxx-include-lint clean (122 files).
NOT verified: that it compiles.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Author
Owner

Build green on t7

11m37.62s Build Succeeded: 620 steps
=== STEP 7/10 unit tests START ===
+ .../cloud_browser_encoder_unittests             SUCCESS: all tests passed.
+ .../cloud_browser_framesink_capturer_unittests  SUCCESS: all tests passed.
+ .../cb_wire_envelope_unittests                  SUCCESS: all tests passed.
=== STEP 7/10 unit tests OK ===

Three binaries invoked, three passed. Checked the invocation lines rather than the summary.

That the wire-envelope tests still pass is the relevant signal here: CbOffererDriver now holds a SignalingTransport* instead of a SignalingWsClient*, and SignalingWsClient::Send became an override — the codec round-trips are what would break if the vtable wiring were wrong.

Not verified: that a second implementation actually works, because there isn't one. The interface is exercised only by SignalingWsClient. A fake transport in a test would prove the seam is usable rather than merely compilable — worth doing when something needs it, not before. Building an unused fake to prove an unused interface would be ceremony.

## ✅ Build green on t7 ``` 11m37.62s Build Succeeded: 620 steps === STEP 7/10 unit tests START === + .../cloud_browser_encoder_unittests SUCCESS: all tests passed. + .../cloud_browser_framesink_capturer_unittests SUCCESS: all tests passed. + .../cb_wire_envelope_unittests SUCCESS: all tests passed. === STEP 7/10 unit tests OK === ``` Three binaries invoked, three passed. Checked the invocation lines rather than the summary. That the wire-envelope tests still pass is the relevant signal here: `CbOffererDriver` now holds a `SignalingTransport*` instead of a `SignalingWsClient*`, and `SignalingWsClient::Send` became an `override` — the codec round-trips are what would break if the vtable wiring were wrong. **Not verified:** that a second implementation actually works, because there isn't one. The interface is exercised only by `SignalingWsClient`. A fake transport in a test would prove the seam is usable rather than merely compilable — worth doing when something needs it, not before. Building an unused fake to prove an unused interface would be ceremony.
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