Optimize shared-method serialization with method references

[zhenrongliew]

Summary

This is a breaking payload-representation change. Methods are now defined using identity-based IDs, repeated call sites use method_ref, and the previous symbol_table/mangled-method representation is removed.
Payloads containing the old mangled method records are not supported by this decoder.
Explicit codec versioning and the policy for rejecting unversioned payloads are separated into the stacked follow-up PR #720

Motivation

Previously, every call site serialized and reconstructed the complete method wrapper, body already de-duplicated with region_ref.
On the representative shared-callee benchmark, relative to #713:

• JSON: 61,470 → 42,459 bytes (−31%)
• CBSON: 5,021 → 4,566 bytes (−9%)
• JSON round trip: 4.36 → 2.31 ms (−47%)
• CBSON round trip: 6.22 → 4.24 ms (−32%)

[github-actions]

☂️ Code Coverage

current status: ✅

Overall Coverage

Statements	Covered	Coverage	Threshold	Status
11816	10655	90%	0%	🟢

New Files

No new covered files...

Modified Files

File	Coverage	Status
src/kirin/ir/attrs/py.py	90%	🟢
src/kirin/serialization/base/context.py	96%	🟢
src/kirin/serialization/base/deserializer.py	82%	🟢
src/kirin/serialization/base/serializer.py	83%	🟢
src/kirin/serialization/core/serializationmodule.py	100%	🟢
src/kirin/serialization/jsonserializer.py	99%	🟢
TOTAL	92%	🟢

updated for commit: 5c0817d by action🐍

[github-actions]

PR Preview Action v1.8.1
🚀 View preview at https://QuEraComputing.github.io/kirin/pr-preview/pr-717/
Built to branch gh-pages at 2026-09-01 22:28 UTC. Preview will be ready when the GitHub Pages deployment is complete.

[codecov]

Codecov Report

❌ Patch coverage is 85.71429% with 11 lines in your changes missing coverage. Please review.

Files with missing lines	Patch %	Lines
src/kirin/serialization/base/deserializer.py	71.87%	9 Missing ⚠️
src/kirin/serialization/base/serializer.py	90.90%	1 Missing ⚠️
src/kirin/serialization/jsonserializer.py	94.73%	1 Missing ⚠️

📢 Thoughts on this report? Let us know!

[kaihsin]

I like this, its more clean than previously. Notice that the change of how schema version is assigned will be super breaking. @david-pl @kylequera.

[kaihsin]

consider this is breaking change, Dennis, can you decouple the versioning change into another PR?

[zhenrongliew]

consider this is breaking change, Dennis, can you decouple the versioning change into another PR?

Split into: #717 now contains only the method-reference payload change. Explicit codec versioning has moved to the stacked PR #720.

Both PRs are breaking changes.
#717 is payload-format breaking because it removes the previous symbol_table/mangled-method representation.
#720 formalizes the new representation as codec v2 and rejects unsupported unversioned payloads before decoding.

[kaihsin]

Thanks I will remove the breaking from this PR then