It is invalid to pass null as a pointer argument to memcpy/memcmp/memset, even if the count argument is zero:

> Where an argument declared as size_t n specifies the length of the array for a
function, n can have the value zero on a call to that function. Unless explicitly stated
otherwise in the description of a particular function in this subclause, pointer arguments
on such a call shall still have valid values [...]

Detected by -fsanitize=nonnull-attribute.

In Sandstorm, we are encoding powerbox queries in packed base64 strings which may be placed in URL query parameters or the like. The strings are provided in interfaces called browser-side. We anticipate that some developers will prefer to specify a hardcoded string rather than generate it on-the-fly, since Cap'n Proto is not well-supported in browsers today, and anyway the developer may have no other reason to have a Cap'n Proto dependency at all, and powerbox queries are often static.

In this context, speed is irrelevant, while having a compact encoding is desirable. It felt sad to me to leave in the segment table in this context, adding redundant bytes when we want a compact encoding.

A compatibility layer is provided to ease migration.

Add asBytes() and asChars() methods to array classes to reinterpret-cast to bytes / chars, since this happens all the time and is otherwise a huge pain.

Use the new methods in a bunch of places.

The project file still only compiles a test binary, but it should be easy to separate out a library project from here.

Thanks again to Bryan Boreham <bjboreham@gmail.com> for much help getting this working.

For portions currently copyright by Kenton (most of it), transfer copyright to Sandstorm Development Group, Inc. (Kenton's company).

The license change is practically meaningless, as MIT and BSD 2-clause are legally equivalent. However, the BSD 2-clause license is sometimes confused for its ugly siblings, BSD 3-clause and BSD 4-clause. The MIT license is more immediately recognizeable for what it is.

Rémy Blank and Jason Choy (the two non-trivial contributors) are on record as approving this change:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/capnproto/xXDd2HUOCcc/gbe_COIuXKYJ

Define new KJ constants for min/max integer values and inf/nan, then remove all use of numeric_limits.

Refactor compiler binary into a multi-tool with sub-commands like 'compile' and 'decode'.  The latter dynamically decodes binary input to text based on a provided schema file.

Mass rename 'reference' -> 'pointer'.  Been meaning to do this for a while -- all the documentation talks about 'pointers', not 'references'.

Replace most CAPNPROTO_ASSERTs with the new logging/error macros.  Also add a SYSCALL macro and use it.  Also add commentary.

Update implemented pointer format to match docs:  Don't store field count in struct pointers because it isn't needed.  Instead extend data and pointer section sizes to 16 bits, which should be enough for anyone.  Also, store offsets from the end of the pointer rather than the beginning, because this makes it possible for them to be zero, which compresses better.  In particular, the root reference will always have a zero offset, so this will shave a byte off of very small packed messages.