Make lang-items private

[doctorn]

TL;DR

tcx.lang_items().my_lang_item().unwrap() is an anti-pattern which triggers ICEs in #![no_core]. This MCP proposes to refactor the current implementation of lang-items to prevent it.

Links and Details

In #![no_core], we cannot assume that any lang-items are present. At present, due to

• use require_lang_item over unwrap. rust#72170
• Remove lang_items\(\).*\.unwrap\(\) rust#72216

the compiler should be free from these kind of ICEs. However, tcx.lang_items().my_lang_item().unwrap() is an anti-pattern that we want to avoid reintroducing in the future. Following some discussion the idea (credit to @ecstatic-morse) is to introduce an opaque option representing the presence (or lack thereof) of lang-items:

pub enum LangItemRecord {
    DefId(DefId),
    Missing(LangItem),
}

To avoid having to explicitly match on this enum everywhere where we normally do something like

if Some(def_id) == tcx.lang_items().my_lang_item() {
    // ...
}

methods would be implemented for LangItemRecord to allow for comparison with DefIds (silently returning false if the item is missing).

By including the Missing variant, I am hoping that the missing and items field of the LanguageItems struct can be unified and we can pre-allocate an array of LangItemRecords with each initially assumed Missing. This is likely a longer term proposal though and the immediate priority is to prevent unwraps.

The rustc-dev-guide is also sadly lacking with respect to descriptions of the various kinds of lang-items and how they're used so I'll be working on supporting documentation as part of this work.

Mentors or Reviewers

@oli-obk
@ecstatic-morse
(Assuming both of you are still interested 😅)

[nikomatsakis]

@rustbot second -- this seems like a good idea to me, though I think @ecstatic-morse or @oli-obk should review.

[oli-obk]

Jup, I'll gladly do any reviews on this

[nagisa]

While I'm supportive of the idea, I'd like to point out #![no_core] IIRC is unstable and is effectively a libcore-exclusive thing anyway, so any ICEs arising as part of using #![no_core] are either people using an unstable feature "wrong" or a bug in the rust-lang/rust repo.

(Consequentially, its fine if we adjust the language item design further. I remember @eddyb wanting to change something about how intrinsics/language items worked).

[bjorn3]

so any ICEs arising as part of using #![no_core] are either people using an unstable feature "wrong"

Indeed. For cg_clif I have a crate called mini_core that I use in place of libcore for some tests as it compiles much faster and when I started libcore didn't compile at all. Sometimes when implementing new features in cg_clif I have to expand mini_core. It has happened several times that I declared a lang item wrong and the compiler gave no clue about what the problem was.

[nikomatsakis]

Yes to all of that. (In my view, no-core is "perma-unstable": that is, we never intend to support people providing their own variants of core.)

[bjorn3]

In my view, no-core is "perma-unstable": that is, we never intend to support people providing their own variants of core.

I know my use case is pretty exotic. I have seen at least one other user: lrs, which is an alternative for libcore that among other things doesn't have any functions that panic.

[nikomatsakis]

@bjorn3 to be clear, I also have a "mini core" that I use for debugging purposes. I don't mean that we shouldn't have the capability, but I do mean that we shouldn't expose it on stable, and I think that we should feel free to make changes to libcore impl. details and lang item definitions liberally.