Module artifact 

AOT compiled-app artifact - the on-disk product of lumenc build.

Today lumenc run parses main.lmn + main.css from source on every launch. The AOT model resolves that work once at build time and bakes the result - a fully cascaded LayoutIR plus the combined script source - into a compact binary blob the runtime deserializes directly, with the markup parser removed from the shipped binary (see the runtime-parse cargo feature).

This mirrors how other toolkits ship compiled UI:

• Qt precompiles .qml into bytecode via qmlcachegen / the QML disk cache and bakes it into the binary, so the QML parser need not run (or even ship) at launch. This module is the direct analogue: the artifact is Lumen’s “QML cache”.
• Slint compiles .slint to Rust at build time. We keep Lumen’s model data-driven rather than codegen (an artifact, not generated Rust) so the same runtime consumes it - but the “resolve markup once at build time” principle is identical.

Where these conflict with Lumen philosophy, philosophy wins: the artifact carries the design-token-reachable cascaded stylesheet (LayoutIR::combined_stylesheet) verbatim, so colors/metrics stay CSS-reachable at runtime (the <for> reconciler re-applies it) - the AOT step resolves the cascade, it does not freeze visuals into hardcoded values.

Container layout

magic  : 4 bytes  b"LMNA"   (Lumen Markup Native Artifact)
version: 2 bytes  u16 LE    (FORMAT_VERSION)
body   : bincode(CompiledApp)

bincode is used over RON/JSON because the artifact is shipped/embedded and binary size is the priority: bincode stores no field names or schema, so a cascaded stylesheet with hundreds of declarations costs a fraction of its textual form. The magic + version prefix lets the loader reject a stale or foreign file cleanly instead of failing deep inside the decoder.

Structs

CompiledApp

The precompiled application: everything the runtime needs to spawn the UI without touching the markup / CSS parser.

CompiledI18n

The app’s translations, as baked at build time.

CompiledPages

The navigable page set of a compiled multi-page app.

CompiledScript

One language’s whole program, as baked at build time.

UnlinkedCapability

One optional subsystem an app’s engine was linked without.

Enums

ArtifactError

Errors from (de)serializing or reading/writing an artifact.

Constants

FORMAT_VERSION

Container format version. Bump on any incompatible change to CompiledApp or the framing. The loader refuses mismatches so a runtime never mis-decodes an artifact built by a different toolchain.

MAGIC

Container magic - “Lumen Markup Native Artifact”.

Functions

deserialize

Deserialize framed container bytes back into a CompiledApp, validating the magic and version first.

read

Read and decode an artifact from path.

read_bytes

Decode an artifact from an in-memory byte slice: the byte-slice counterpart of read. Used by the link-not-embed launcher path, where the compiler produces LMNA bytes in-process and hands them across the C-ABI (lumen_app_new_from_lmna) instead of writing a file. Thin alias over deserialize; validates magic + version identically.

serialize

Serialize a CompiledApp into the framed container bytes.

write

Write an artifact to path.