Validation

Validation compares a BindingPackage against one or more SymbolInventory values.

It answers a practical question: do the declarations we extracted line up with what the native artifacts actually provide?

API Entry Points

Use validate for one artifact and validate_many for several.

What Validation Looks At

Validation focuses on symbol presence, symbol kind, visibility, binding strength, decorated names, and conservative ABI-shape evidence where the artifact can prove something honestly.

Common Statuses

Current statuses include:

• Matched
• AbiShapeMismatch
• Missing
• UnresolvedDeclaredLinkInputs
• DecorationMismatch
• NotAFunction
• NotAVariable
• Hidden
• WeakMatch
• DuplicateProviders

How To Read A Report

• Matched means the declaration resolved to a visible symbol of the expected kind
• Missing means no matching symbol was found and the package did not declare native link inputs that might reasonably have provided it
• UnresolvedDeclaredLinkInputs means the package did declare native inputs, but validation still found no provider
• DecorationMismatch means a decorated or raw spelling normalized to the declaration name
• Hidden and WeakMatch should usually be treated more conservatively than a strong export
• DuplicateProviders usually blocks promotion until the consumer chooses a policy

Provider Evidence

Provider evidence may include plain artifact paths or archive-member provenance such as libfoo.a:bar.o.

Consumer Rule

Validation findings are structured evidence, not hard execution errors. Treat them as policy input for the next stage.