Rustdoc is showing definitions of "private" types in type def documentation
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- Dominant language
- Rust
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Description
I tried this code:
https://github.com/diesel-rs/diesel/commit/116e8686aea1fcd0d488e293a2887c31aa805d78
cargo +nightly doc --open -p diesel --no-deps
Search for diesel::dsl::Eq afterwards to get to this page
I expected to see this happen: Rustdoc hides the aliased type + tuple field sections as the Grouped by type is not exposed as part of the public API. (That type is in a crate local module)
Instead, this happened: Rustdoc shows information about private types.
Meta
rustdoc --version --verbose:
rustdoc 1.89.0-nightly (59aa1e873 2025-06-03)
binary: rustdoc
commit-hash: 59aa1e873028948faaf8b97e5e02d4db340ad7b1
commit-date: 2025-06-03
host: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
release: 1.89.0-nightly
LLVM version: 20.1.5
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
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- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Reproduce the report using Diesel commit 116e8686aea1fcd0d488e293a2887c31aa805d78 and cargo +nightly doc --open -p diesel --no-deps, then inspect the diesel::dsl::Eq page. Trace rustdoc's visibility handling for the aliased type and tuple fields; done means private Grouped details are no longer shown while public type documentation remains available.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- rust
- Domain
- compilers, documentation
- Issue type
- Bug
- Difficulty
- 4/5
- Estimated time
- 3-5 days
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 35/100