oxidecomputer / oxidecomputer/maghemite

bgp: want encoding methods (.to_wire()) to all be infallible

Open
#615 4 comments 0 reactions 1 assignee View on GitHub

@nicolaskagami is already working on this.

Since Jul 1, 2026.

bgp want
Dominant language
Rust
Stars
94
Forks
6
Avg merge
1d 8h
Merged PRs (30d)
12

Description

Surprisingly, many of the encoding methods are fallible. IMO this should not be handled at this layer, as semantic validation and structuring of types should be handled during type instantiation rather than during serialization of an instance of that type.

Looking through bgp/src/messages.rs I see the following examples of .to_wire() returning a Result<Vec<u8>> rather than just a Vec<u8>:

  • Message.to_wire()
  • OpenMessage.to_wire()
  • UpdateMessage.to_wire()
  • PathAttribute.to_wire()
  • PathAttributeValue.to_wire()
  • As4PathSegment.to_wire()
  • MpUnreachNlri.to_wire()
  • NotificationMessage.to_wire()
  • OptionalParameter.to_wire()
  • Capability.to_wire()

These could all be modified to push the fallibility onto the creator of the type rather than the encoder.

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Assessment

This issue has not been assessed yet.

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.