o2-timeframe-file-format.1.in

.\" Manpage for O2.
.TH man 1 "19 May 2017" "1.0" "Alice O2 Timeframe Format"

.SH DESCRIPTION

O2 is Alice next generation software framework to be used for RUN3. This is a
quick desctiption of the timeframe file format as dumped by
o2-timeframe-writer-device and read by the o2-timeframe-reader-device.

The file format is simply a dump of the timeframe on disk. Multiple timeframes
can be concatenated resulting in a valid file. The format is as follow:

o2tf: Timeframe [Timeframe [..]]
Timeframe: Subtimeframe [Subtimeframe [...]] TimeframeIndex
Subtimeframe: Header Payload
Header: DataHeader derived header stack
Payload: binary blob
TimeframeIndex: IndexElement [IndexElement [..]]
IndexElement: DataHeader Payload <Position in Timeframe>
Position in timeframe: int (4 bytes)
DataHeader: only the DataHeader part
Payload: binary blob

.SH DISCLAIMER

Notice that this file format is a work in progress and cannot be used for
anything but debugging purposes.