Merge pull request #103 from nikomatsakis/eager-drop-design-notes

add design notes from lang-team#86 (eager drop)

Author: nikomatsakis

src/SUMMARY.md

@@ -27,3 +27,4 @@
   - [Generalizing coroutines](./design_notes/general_coroutines.md)
   - [Extending the capabilities of compiler-generated function types](./design_notes/fn_type_trait_impls.md)
   - [Auto traits](./design_notes/auto_traits.md)
+  - [Eager drop](./design_notes/eager_drop.md)

src/design_notes/eager_drop.md

@@ -0,0 +1,76 @@
+# Eager drop design note
+
+- Project proposal [rust-lang/lang-team#86](https://github.com/rust-lang/lang-team/issues/86)
+
+## Observations
+
+### Any attempt to make drop run more eagerly will have to take borrows into account
+
+The original proposal was to use "CFG dead" as a criteria, but it's pretty clear that this will not work well. Example:
+
+```rust=
+{
+    let x = String::new();
+    let y = &x;
+    // last use of x is here
+    println!("{}", y);
+    // but we use y here
+    ...
+}
+```
+
+Here, the fact that `y` (indirectly) uses `x` feels like an important thing to take into account.
+
+### Some destructors can be run "at any time"...
+
+Some destructors have very significant side-effects. The most notable example is dropping a lock guard.
+
+Others correspond solely to "releasing resources": freeing memory is the most common example, but another might be replacing an entry in a table because you are done using it.
+
+### ...but sometimes that significance is only known at the call site
+
+However, it can be hard to know what is significant. For a lock guard, for example, if the lock is just being used to guard the data, then moving the lock release early is actually _desirable_, because you want to release the lock as soon as you are doing changing the data. But sometimes you have a `Mutex<()>`, in which case the lock has extra semantics. It's hard to know for sure.
+
+### Smarter drop placement will mean that adding uses of a variable changes when its destructor runs
+
+This is not necesarily a problem, but it's an obvious implication: right now, the drop always runs when we exit the scope, so adding further uses to a variable has no effect, but that would have to change. That could be surprising (e.g., adding a debug printout changes the time when a lock is released).
+
+In contrast, if you add an early drop `drop(foo)` today, you get helpful error messages when you try to use it again.
+
+In other words, it's useful to have the _destructor_ occurring at a known time (sometimes...).
+
+### Today's drop rules are, however, a source of confusion
+
+The semantics of `let _ = <expr>` have been known to caught a lot of confusion, particularly given the interaction of place expressions and value expresssions:
+
+- `let _ = foo` -- no effect
+- `let _ = foo()` -- immediately drops the result of invoking `foo()`
+- `let _guard = foo` -- moves `foo` into `_guard` and drops at the end of the block
+- `let _guard = foo()` -- moves `foo()` into `_guard` and drops at the end of the block
+
+Another common source of confusion is the lifetimes of temporaries in `match` statements and the like:
+
+```rust
+match foo.lock().data.copy_out() {
+    ...
+} // lock released here!
+```
+
+`let guard = foo; ...; drop(guard);` has the advantage of explicitness, so does something like `foo.with(|guard| ...)`
+
+### Clarity for unsafe code can be quite important
+
+There are known footguns today with the timing of destructors and unsafe code. For example, `CString::new().as_ptr()` is a common thing people try to do that does not work. Eager destructors would enable more motion, which might exacerbate the problem.
+
+In addition, unsafe code means we might not be able to know the semantics associated with a destructor, such as what precisely a `Mutex<()>` guards, and moving a drop earlier *will* break some unsafe code in hard-to-detect ways.
+
+## Alternatives
+
+- Scoped methods
+- let blocks
+- "Defer" type constructs or scoped guard type constructs from other languages
+  - Go
+  - D
+  - Python
+- Built-in macros or RAII/closure-based helpers in the standard library.
+  - Note that the [scopeguard](https://crates.io/crates/scopeguard) crate offers macros like `defer!` that inject a let into the block.