Yet Another Cryptographic Library for Research

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Yacl-r is a fork and extension of the C++ crypto library secretflow/yacl. It provides research implementations of cryptographic and secure-computation building blocks, including OT, VOLE, TPRE, DPF, PRG, RO, AES, hashing, public-key encryption, signatures, and supporting math/link utilities.

Target platforms: Linux x86_64, Linux aarch64, and macOS Apple Silicon.

Repo Layout

• aead, aes, block_cipher, hash, hmac: symmetric crypto, hashing, and authentication primitives.
• pke, sign, envelope, tpre: public-key, signature, envelope, and threshold proxy re-encryption code.
• ot: base OT, OT extension, OT stores, and SimplestOT backends.
• vole: base VOLE, MP-VOLE, MPFSS, and silent VOLE code.
• mpc: higher-level MPC kernels and plaintext/secret-sharing executors.
• dpf, oprf, snark: additional protocol implementations.
• io: streaming I/O and Bristol Fashion circuit parsing.
• link: RPC-style SPMD communication utilities.
• math: big integers, finite fields, ECC, and pairing support.
• rand: randomness, DRBG, entropy source, and OpenSSL provider code.
• utils: common types, buffers, exceptions, serialization, and helper utilities.
• theoretical_tools: PRG/RO/code utilities used by protocol implementations.
• experimental: experimental components that are not part of the stable module layout.
• cmake: CMake modules, dependency scripts, and dependency patches.

Prerequisites

• GCC >= 11 or Clang >= 12 with C++20 support
• CMake >= 3.20
• Ninja or Make
• Perl 5 with core modules, required by OpenSSL
• patch, required for dependency patching
• GMP development files available on the system

Ubuntu example:

sudo apt install -y git cmake ninja-build gcc g++ patch libgmp-dev

Build

Yacl-r uses CMake.

# Configure a Release build.
cmake -S . -B build -G Ninja

# Configure a Debug build.
cmake -S . -B build -G Ninja -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug

# Build.
cmake --build build -j$(nproc)

Build fuzz targets with Clang/libFuzzer:

cmake -S . -B build-fuzz -G Ninja \
  -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=clang -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=clang++ \
  -DBUILD_FUZZ=On
cmake --build build-fuzz -j$(nproc)

Test

Run tests from the build directory:

cd build
ctest --output-on-failure
ctest -R plaintext_executor_test --output-on-failure
./bin/buffer_test

Formatting And Checks

No pre-commit or automated license-header check is configured in this repo. Use the regular build, test, and focused formatting/linting commands instead:

clang-format -i path/to/file.cc
clang-tidy path/to/file.cc -- -p build
cmake --build build -j$(nproc)
ctest --output-on-failure

Install

Yacl-r supports cmake --install.

cmake -S . -B build
cmake --build build -j$(nproc)
cmake --install build

# Or install into a custom prefix.
cmake --install build --prefix /path/to/prefix

Vendored third-party dependencies are installed into a private subtree inside the install prefix instead of being copied into system-wide include/library locations:

• public headers: include/yacl-r/yacl/...
• private vendored headers: include/yacl-r/deps/...
• private vendored libraries: lib*/yacl-r/deps/...

This keeps Yacl-r's bundled dependencies isolated from the system toolchain and from unrelated projects. GMP is still resolved as a system dependency at package-consume time.

Consumers can use the installed package via CMake:

find_package(Yacl CONFIG REQUIRED)
target_link_libraries(your_target PRIVATE Yacl::yacl)

The exported target adds include/yacl-r to the include path, so installed consumers include public headers as #include "yacl/...".

License

See LICENSE.