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go-ruby-yaml documentation

Ruby's Psych-compatible YAML emitter and loader in pure Go — MRI-compatible, no cgo.

go-ruby-yaml/yaml is a faithful, pure-Go (zero cgo) reimplementation of Ruby's Psych YAML, matching reference Ruby (MRI) byte-for-byte. The module path is github.com/go-ruby-yaml/yaml.

It was extracted from rbgo's prelude/internals into a reusable standalone library: the module is standalone and importable by any Go program, and it is the backend bound into go-embedded-ruby by rbgo as a native module — just like go-ruby-regexp and go-ruby-erb. The dependency runs the other way: this library has no dependency on the Ruby runtime.

Status: emitter + loader complete — Psych byte-exact

Faithful port of Ruby's Psych: Dump emitter and Load / SafeLoad loader, with anchors and aliases, the !ruby/object: Ruby tags, Symbol / Time / Range / bignum scalars, and both block and flow styles. Validated by a differential oracle against the system ruby / Psych — emitted YAML and loaded values compared byte-for-byte — at 100% coverage, gofmt + go vet clean, CI green across the six 64-bit Go targets and three OSes.

Quick taste

s, _ := yaml.Dump(map[string]any{"a": 1, "b": []any{2, 3}})
// "---\na: 1\nb:\n- 2\n- 3\n"

v, _ := yaml.Load("--- &a [1, 2]\n*a\n")   // shared via alias
v, _  = yaml.SafeLoad("--- !ruby/object:Foo {}")  // refused: error

Repositories

Repo What it is
yaml the library — Ruby's Psych YAML in pure Go
docs this documentation site (MkDocs Material, versioned with mike)
go-ruby-yaml.github.io the organization landing page (Hugo)
brand logo and brand assets

Principles

  • Pure Go, CGO_ENABLED=0 — trivial cross-compilation, a single static binary, no C toolchain.
  • MRI byte-exact. Output matches reference Ruby exactly, not approximately, validated by a differential oracle against the ruby binary.
  • Standalone & reusable. Extracted from rbgo's internals; no dependency on the Ruby runtime — the dependency runs the other way.
  • 100% test coverage is the target, enforced as a CI gate, across 6 arches and 3 OSes.

Where to go next

  • Why pure Go — why this slice of Ruby is deterministic enough to live as a standalone, interpreter-independent Go library.
  • Usage & API — the public surface and worked examples.
  • Roadmap — what is done and what is downstream by design.

Source lives at github.com/go-ruby-yaml/yaml.