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Heirloom

Definition

Heirloom is Dropbox's test suite for Nucleus's real client-server protocol — the coverage gap left by Trinity's Rust backend mock. It operates on the same deterministic-seeded-PRNG discipline as Trinity for the client side, but because it talks to a real Dropbox backend over the network across multiple language boundaries, it must trade off some determinism guarantees.

Cost

Heirloom runs ~100× slower than Trinity — the full backend stack, multiple language-boundary crossings, and real network I/O all contribute. This is the reason Heirloom is a separate suite and not the primary one: Trinity's ~10M-runs/night throughput on in-memory mocks would collapse to ~100K-runs/night on Heirloom-class infrastructure, and many classes of bug would never be exercised often enough to surface.

Scope

Specifically: protocol drift between the Rust mock backend Trinity uses and the real Dropbox server implementation. If Trinity's mock diverges from production semantics, Trinity will pass tests that real clients would fail; Heirloom is the catch-all for that drift.

Status

The 2024 post promises: "How exactly Heirloom works is a subject for a future blog post." As of ingest, no such post has been captured in the wiki.

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