rust-lang / rust-lang/rust-clippy
Lint possible leaked private structs
Nobody has claimed this yet.
- Dominant language
- Rust
- Stars
- 13.5k
- Forks
- 2.2k
- Avg merge
- 2d 10h
- Merged PRs (30d)
- 32
Description
What it does
I discovered yesterday that it's possible to leak private struct types in public functions if that struct is public but lives in a private module. Those on the Rust discord considered this a bug in Rust itself but since it's a breaking change, it might need to wait until 2024. So perhaps this should be added to clippy for the time being.
Categories (optional)
- Kind: correctness?
Drawbacks
Perhaps this should instead just be added as a warning into rustc
The issue is that this pattern is supposedly intended and is a feature to implement sealed Traits, but it seems pretty much a bug to me for Structs.
Example
This is a minimal example showing the leaking of structs.
use foo::bbb;
// use foo::bar::Bar; // error since `bar` is private
fn main() {
bbb();
}
mod foo {
use bar::Bar;
pub fn bbb() -> Bar {
Bar
}
mod bar {
pub struct Bar;
}
}
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start by compiling the minimal Rust example in the issue and confirm that a public function exposes a struct from a private module. No source files or tests are named; done means defining the intended Clippy behavior for this case and adding coverage showing that the leak is detected.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- rust
- Domain
- tooling
- Issue type
- Bug
- Difficulty
- 4/5
- Estimated time
- 3-5 days
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 35/100