This is Better Than Protobuf

ASN.1 is a data serialization standard from 1984 that predates Protocol Buffers and solves similar problems. The libtasn1 library allows parsing ASN.1 schema definitions at runtime to create serializers/deserializers without code generation. The API lets you define data structures in .asn files, parse them into an internal tree representation, create elements, set values, and encode/decode binary data. While the core concept is elegant—runtime schema parsing with dynamic introspection—the implementation has quirks like inconsistent naming conventions, poorly documented APIs, buffer overflow risks, and unusual type handling (booleans as null-terminated strings). Despite rough edges typical of legacy GNU projects, the approach offers more flexibility than Protobuf's code generation model.