felixguendling/cista

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

2244 stars · 159 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

Cista is a single-header, dependency-free C++17 library for high-performance serialization and reflection of native C++ data structures, with zero-copy deserialization and support for cyclic and recursive structures. It includes serializable SwissTable-based hash map/set containers, automatic hash/equality derivation, optional recursive type-hash versioning, integrity checksums, and direct-to-filesystem serialization.

Use cases

• serialize C++ structs to a binary format
• zero-copy deserialization of native C++ data structures
• fast serialization library for C++17 with no macros
• save and load complex or cyclic C++ objects to files
• serialize hash maps directly to a memory-mapped file
• version and checksum binary-serialized data structures
• C++ reflection without source code generation

When to choose

• You want raw performance and to serialize your existing native structs without boilerplate, macros, or code generation
• You need a single-header, zero-dependency serialization solution in C++
• You must serialize complex graphs with cyclic references or recursive data structures
• You want to serialize directly to disk or memory-mapped files to save memory
• You need built-in data structure versioning and corruption checks via checksums

When to avoid

• You need cross-language or cross-platform interoperability with standardized formats like JSON, Protobuf, or FlatBuffers
• You require human-readable output or schema evolution across different languages
• Your project is not C++ or is below C++17
• You need broad tooling/ecosystem support (browsers, codegen plugins) around the serialized format

Facets

library · maturity active

serialization developer-tools performance cpp cross-platform windows cpp17 header-only zero-copy reflection single-header hash-map mmap high-performance no-macros libfuzzer linux macos

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