next generation of serialization in Go: ZebraPack, like gobs version 2

<p><a href="https://github.com/glycerine/zebrapack">https://github.com/glycerine/zebrapack</a> (... I tried to post this to reddit<a href="/r/golang">/r/golang</a> before; I&#39;m not sure why it didn&#39;t show up the first time.)</p> <hr/>**评论：**<br/><br/>funny_falcon: <pre><p>Great! I always said msgpack with integer keys is better alternative to protobuf.</p></pre>aten_j: <pre><p>:) glad to know I wasn&#39;t the only one to realize this ...maybe great minds think alike... and it turns out to be just as, if not more, performant.</p></pre>siwu: <pre><p>How? Type safety and hard schema is the greatest thing about it imho.</p></pre>ericzhill: <pre><p>I&#39;m in the same boat. Protobuf uses integer keys to marshal data too. What is the benefit to msgpack over pb? </p></pre>kostix: <pre><p>Still I think buzzwording &#34;next generation&#34; is not warranted in this particular case. The project is definitely cool but I fail to see what is <em>so novel</em> about its approaches which makes it exactly next gen ;-)</p></pre>aten_j: <pre><p>:) Thanks for the kinds words, @kostix. I probably have errorred on the side of light hyperbole here rather than going Amish, but still I do believe this is a case of &#34;revolution by evolution&#34;. To explain:</p> <p>To me it is the confluence of a number of &#34;small&#34; features (themselves available in isolation in other formats) that add up to a big deal:</p> <p>1) the omitempty support (not previously available) means that large/complete schemas are viable without taking any space on the wire when 99% of fields go unused; 2) schema based on Go instead of separate schema language that must be maintained; 3) strong field numbering; 4) field deprecation support; 5) codegen for speed; 6) possibility of any language being able to do reads/writes with a minor ammount of work. </p> <p>Nowhere else can you get all these, for Go and all other languages, today.</p> <p>Moreover, particularly compared to Gobs (which is promoted as a Go centric serialization format but is not cross-language compatible and is quite slow), ZebraPack could and should be the next generation of serialization for Go, the &#34;go to&#34; choice when reaching for a serialization lib.</p></pre>