The v2 modernisation, as planned

A record, not a specification. Nothing here is authoritative about how the package behaves today. For that, read the public API, the invariants and the quality policy.

It is kept because it answers questions the current code cannot: why v1 was shaped the way it was, which alternatives were weighed, and where the finished work diverged from the plan that produced it.

The full original text of the plan is preserved at tag 2.0.0, as ARCHITECTURE-V2.md.

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The planned architecture, and what was built instead

The plan's §2 sketched a target layout before any of it existed. Four parts of that sketch were never built, and the sketch was never reconciled, which is the drift this reorganisation exists to stop.

Planned	Built	Why it diverged
Signing/TcLibPdfSigner.php + Signing/TcpdfSigner.php	Signing/IncrementalSigner.php	PR 7c swapped tc-lib-pdf for tc-lib-pdf-sign, so the package stopped rendering PDFs entirely. With no renderer there was no driver pair to choose between.
Enums/SealPage.php	Data\SealPlacement::LAST_PAGE	The page is one field of a placement, not a concept with its own behaviour.
->approval() / ->certify() / ->ltv()	->profile()	The PAdES level determines all three. Choosing the level once is the same decision, expressed as one call instead of three that can contradict each other.
Console/	Commands/	Laravel's own convention.
'temp_disk', 'signer' => 'tc-lib-pdf'	'temp_path', no signer key	The disk abstraction bought nothing once temporary files stopped living in vendor/; the signer key described a driver choice that no longer exists.

The planned entry point was A1PdfSign::certificate($pfx, $pass)->pdf(…). What shipped puts a newSignature() in front of it, so the facade can carry one-shot methods (signFromFile, signFromPem, signFromUpload) alongside the builder without overloading a single name.

The PDF engine: TCPDF → tc-lib-pdf → neither

The trigger was not preference. tecnickcom/tcpdf 6 was discontinued by its author on 2026-05-30, and tc-lib-pdf is its official successor. Staying put meant building v2 on an engine with no upstream.

An earlier step in the plan proposed removing tecnickcom/tc-lib-pdf on the grounds that it was declared in composer.json and used nowhere. The observation was right and the conclusion was wrong: it was unused because it had not been adopted yet. That removal was reverted, and what left instead was tecnickcom/tcpdf and, with it, setasign/fpdi.

Then the destination moved as well. PR 7c swapped tc-lib-pdf for tc-lib-pdf-sign, thirteen transitive dependencies down to one, because the package had stopped needing a PDF engine at all. Once signing became appending a revision, nothing renders a document: the bytes already exist and only get extended.

The proof-of-concept that preceded all of this answered the one question that could have invalidated the plan: whether tc-lib-pdf delivered LTV and timestamping in practice rather than in a docblock. It did: 15/15 checks, with a live TSA round-trip. A second spike proved the incremental writer on its own, 3/3 signatures valid. Both were spikes in lsnepomuceno/laravel-a1-pdf-sign.

Fonts, a blocker that evaporated

tc-lib-pdf could not emit any PDF without a generated font definition, not even a signature-only document containing no text:

Com\Tecnick\Pdf\Font\Exception: unable to read file: helvetica.json

TCPDF 6 bundles 165 fonts in PHP format; tc-lib-pdf-font expects JSON. Not interchangeable. The plan therefore added unforeseen scope: generate the core-14 metrics, ship them under resources/fonts/, and define K_PATH_FONTS from the service provider.

None of it was needed. PR 7c removed tc-lib-pdf along with the rendering it had been brought in for. The package appends revisions to bytes it already has and never emits a document, so no font definition is ever loaded.

What survives is the inverse rule, and it is load-bearing: K_PATH_FONTS must stay undefined, because tc-lib-pdf and TCPDF 6 read it in different formats and defining it kills TCPDF silently. That now lives in the invariants.

Quality tooling that was planned and not adopted

The plan's §6 listed a stack assembled before any of it was installed. Most of it shipped; these did not.

• Roave backward-compatibility-check. Deferred in PR 11: it compares against a released tag, so it only became meaningful from 2.0.0 onward. Still worth having.
• rector/rector + driftingly/rector-laravel. Planned as a --dry-run gate; never wired in.
• A bc-check CI job and a test:arch script. Neither exists; arch tests run as part of the ordinary suite.
• The arch rules as first drafted. legacy stays contained expected LSNepomuceno\Signet\Sign to be deprecated, but that namespace was deleted outright rather than deprecated, so the rule became no deprecated namespace lingers. no shell-out outside the CLI driver pinned the exception to OpenSslCliCertificateReader; PR 12 rebuilt ProcessRunner on Illuminate\Process\Factory and widened the rule to that single helper instead.

Several PHP-8.4 features were listed as targets and deliberately not taken: asymmetric visibility on the value objects, property hooks on Certificate, and #[\NoDiscard] on the fluent methods. The criterion the plan set for itself, that a feature earns adoption when it removes code or removes a class of bug, ruled them out on its own terms.

The PHPUnit → Pest migration, and a codemod that failed

pestphp/pest-plugin-drift was meant to convert the TestCase classes automatically. On this codebase it corrupted tests/TestCase.php, leaving method bodies without their signatures, emitted uses() above the import block, and scaffolded Feature/ and Unit/ directories the package does not want.

With six test files totalling ~590 lines, converting by hand was both safer and faster. The plugin was never taken as a dev dependency.

The lesson generalises, and it is why no codemod has been adopted since: a codemod is worth it at scale, not at this size.

Where v1 stood

Real problems imposed by the current architecture, not matters of taste.

Security / robustness

1. ManageCert::fromPfx() writes the PEM containing the private key in plain text into src/Temp/, that is, inside the consuming application's vendor/, and the certificate password travels on the command line (-password pass:...), visible through ps to any user on the machine.
2. Temp files are not removed on exception paths. File::delete() always comes after code that can throw; the test tearDown() only masks the leak.
3. a1TempDir() requires the package directory to be writable, with a silent fallback to sys_get_temp_dir(): non-deterministic behaviour across environments.

Coupling / testability

4. The public API is six global functions in autoload.files. No namespace, not mockable, no class autocompletion in the IDE, and any signature change is breaking.
5. Zero contracts, zero container bindings, zero facade. The ServiceProvider only registers two commands. Nothing is swappable by the consumer.
6. ManageCert carries three responsibilities: PKCS#12 conversion, x509 parsing/validation and blob encryption. makeDebugCertificate(), which is test code, lives in a production class.

Design

7. String constants (MODE_RESOURCE, FONT_SIZE_LARGE, IMAGE_DRIVER_GD) where PHP 8.1+ offers enums.
8. SignaturePdf mixes producing and delivering: signature() calls File::put() and immediately File::get() back in MODE_RESOURCE, a pointless disk round-trip, since TCPDF::output(..., 'S') already returns the complete string.
9. ValidatePdfSignature extracts the PKCS#7 blob with a ByteRange regex and then does text parsing of openssl pkcs7 -print_certs output through three chained preg_replace calls. Fragile and coupled to the binary's output format.
10. No publishable config: nothing is configurable: temp disk, image driver, default seal, legacy flag.

Hygiene

11. tecnickcom/tc-lib-pdf: ^8 sits in composer.json and is used nowhere in src/ or tests/. ⚠️ Do not remove. See the engine migration below: this "dead" dependency is precisely the official successor to TCPDF, and becomes the v2 engine.
12. The PDF engine is officially deprecated. tecnickcom/tcpdf 6 was discontinued by its author on 2026-05-30. See the engine migration below, the highest-impact change in this plan.
13. No Pint, no PHPStan. CONTRIBUTING.md still asks for PSR-2 (deprecated since 2019).

Defects found while executing the plan

14. encryptCertData() and decryptCertData() do not round-trip. Discovered in PR 5. encryptCertData() stores $cert->getCert()->original, the PEM produced by openssl pkcs12 -nodes. decryptCertData() writes that PEM to a .pfx file and feeds it to openssl pkcs12 -in, which expects binary PKCS#12 and fails:

    asn1 encoding routines:asn1_check_tlen:wrong tag ... Type=PKCS12

    Half of the certificate-storage API has therefore never worked. It went unnoticed because the v1 suite covered encryptCertData() only, asserting the shape of its return value and never reading it back.

    The fix belongs to PR 6: ManageCert needs a path that ingests already-decrypted PEM content instead of shelling out to pkcs12, which also removes a temp file and a process spawn. It carries a compatibility question that needs an explicit decision: the $isBase64 flag suggests some callers may be storing the raw PFX binary rather than the PEM, and those callers are served correctly by the current code path.

    ✅ Fixed in PR 6. CertificateVault::open() parses the stored PEM directly, which also removes a temporary file and a process spawn. The round-trip test passes.

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The roadmap, as executed

Independent PRs on the v2.x-dev branch.

#	PR	Scope	Risk
0	✅ tc-lib-pdf PoC	done: 15/15 checks, live TSA round-trip. A spike in lsnepomuceno/laravel-a1-pdf-sign; see the engine migration below	n/a
0b	✅ Incremental update PoC	done: 3/3 signatures valid. A spike in lsnepomuceno/laravel-a1-pdf-sign; see 0006	n/a
1	✅ PHP/Laravel floor	done: ">=8.4 <8.6" / L12+, 4-job matrix, tc-lib-pdf ^8.67, .gitattributes, PHP 8.4 nullable fixes. Suite green on 8.4 and 8.5 (21 passed)	n/a
2	✅ Formatting + static analysis	done: Pint (PER-CS), PHPStan level: max + Larastan + strict/deprecation rules, 216-error baseline, quality job, composer check, CONTRIBUTING.md	n/a
3	✅ PHPUnit → Pest	done: Pest 5, tests/Pest.php, named datasets, arch tests, type coverage 94.3% gated in CI. drift tried and discarded (the codemod that failed, below)	n/a
4	✅ Data + Enums	done: Data/ readonly VOs, Enums/ carrying behaviour, Entities\* as deprecated subclasses, #[\SensitiveParameter] on passwords, type coverage 95.7%. SignatureInfo, SealPlacement and SignedPdf deferred to PR 7, where they gain consumers	n/a
5	✅ Package infrastructure	done: publishable config, Contracts\A1PdfSign bound as a singleton, facade, helpers delegating to the container, 4 more arch rules, type coverage 100%. Found defect finding 14 above. The finer-grained contracts land with their implementations in PRs 6-9	n/a
5b	✅ Remove deprecated API, part 1	done: Entities\* and the legacy constants dropped, Data\* final, idiomatic enum backing values, arch rule guarding the removal, the Laravel package's UPGRADE.md	n/a
6	✅ Certificates	done: NativeCertificateReader default, CLI fallback for legacy only, CertificateVault (fixes finding 14 above), TemporaryFile, DebugCertificate in Testing/, global helpers removed. 63 tests, no skips	n/a
7	✅ Signing	done: IncrementalSigner bound to PdfSigner, PendingSignature + SignedPdf, FPDI and TCPDF dropped, disk round-trip gone. No TcLibPdfSigner/TcpdfSigner pair: 7c swapped tc-lib-pdf for tc-lib-pdf-sign, so the package no longer renders PDFs and the core fonts of the fonts blocker below became moot, so K_PATH_FONTS is deliberately left undefined	n/a
7b	✅ Multi-signature	done: Incremental/* from PoC 0b, the fallback path: with tc-lib-pdf gone there was no appendIncrementalRevision() left to inherit. Closes TCPDF#430; samples/ carries a six-signature document. approval() / certify() / ltv() were not built: the level is chosen by profile(), and timestamp() survives as its shorthand	n/a
7c	✅ PAdES profiles	done: CAdES builder replaces openssl_pkcs7_sign, B-B/B-T live, tc-lib-pdf swapped for tc-lib-pdf-sign (13 deps → 1)	n/a
7d	✅ DSS	done: B-LT, store in its own revision	n/a
7e	✅ DocTimeStamp	done: B-LTA, archive timestamp over the whole file	n/a
8	✅ Seal	done: InterventionSealRenderer on Intervention Image v3 rather than the tc-lib-pdf API, which left with 7c. In-memory seal, driver/font/colour/background from config, SealPlacement + Incremental\SealAppearance stamping the widget	n/a
9	✅ Validation	done: signatures verified cryptographically, all of them reported, text parsing gone	n/a
10	✅ Mutation	done: 71.7% covered-MSI, gate at 70; found the ASN.1 boundary gaps	n/a
11	✅ Cleanup + tooling	done: ManageCert retired, dependency-analyser and normalize wired in, README. Roave BC check deferred: it compares against a released tag, so it only becomes meaningful from 2.0.0	n/a
12	✅ Hardening	done: Laravel floor raised to 13, once Pest 5 and Laravel 12 proved uninstallable together (0005); ProcessRunner rebuilt on Illuminate\Process\Factory, with the shell-out arch rule widened to match (0001); mutation widened to src/Signing/ and the --covered-min → --min flag corrected (the quality policy); Husky pre-commit hook adopted for Pint (the quality policy)	n/a
13	✅ PEM certificates	done: certificatePem() / certificateFromPem() / signFromPem() onto the existing pipeline, PemCertificateReader, and the check_private_key fix they depended on. pdf:sign routes by content and takes --key; the vault detects the encoding; .gitignore covers *.pem / *.key and samples/certificate.pem is the PFX's own identity re-encoded. Verified in poppler (0007)	n/a

PR 0 comes before everything else and is a throwaway proof of concept, not production code. It answers the one question that could invalidate the plan: does tc-lib-pdf deliver LTV and timestamping in practice, and not just in a docblock? Until that answer exists, PRs 7 and 8 are speculation.

PRs 1–4 can land immediately without touching behaviour, and order matters: the toolchain (2–3) precedes the refactor so that arch tests, PHPStan and mutation act as a safety net for PRs 5–9 rather than as a post-hoc audit.

PR 6 needs the most care. Before it, freeze the current suite as a baseline, including a case with a real legacy PFX, which the tests do not have today.

PR 10 comes after the refactor on purpose: running mutation over the legacy code would yield a low score for structural reasons, not for lack of tests.

Still open

Two things the plan set out to do are not done, and neither is covered by a passing test:

1. ✅ Independently validated with poppler's pdfsig (25.12), which reads the documents with its own PDF and CMS implementation rather than ours. Every profile reports Signature is Valid, the sub-filters are recognised, and a three-signature document shows all three valid with correctly progressive coverage.

   It found a real defect no test had caught. ByteRangeCalculator::apply() searched for the literal /Contents <, but tc-lib-pdf-sign writes /Contents< without the space, so the archive timestamp revision located the signature's placeholder and overwrote it. poppler reported the signer as www.freetsa.org and the digest as mismatched. The lookup is now a regex tolerant of both spellings.

   A second defect surfaced from the same run: our own validator treated the archive timestamp as a signature over the document and reported a valid B-LTA as invalid. A /DocTimeStamp signs the TSTInfo holding the document's hash, not the document, so it is now told apart and reported separately.

   The archive timestamp was verified end to end: its imprint equals the SHA-256 of the bytes its own /ByteRange covers.

   Still not done: Adobe Reader and the ITI Validar. Both need a real ICP-Brasil certificate to say anything meaningful about trust: poppler already reports Certificate issuer isn't Trusted for the self-signed test certificate, which is correct and expected. pdfsig cannot verify ETSI.RFC3161 document timestamps either, so that part rests on the OpenSSL check above.

2. Roave BC check is not wired in. It compares the public API against a released tag; with 2.0.0 unreleased and everything breaking against ^1, it would only produce noise. It becomes meaningful, and should be added, once 2.0.0 ships.

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