rust-lang / rust-lang/rust

Tracking Issue for type_info

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B-experimental C-tracking-issue F-type_info T-lang T-libs T-types
Dominant language
Rust
Stars
119k
Forks
16.1k
PR merge metrics
PR metrics pending

Description

This is a tracking issue for the project goal https://github.com/rust-lang/rust-project-goals/issues/406
The feature gate for the issue is #![feature(type_info)].

About tracking issues

Tracking issues are used to record the overall progress of implementation.
They are also used as hubs connecting to other relevant issues, e.g., bugs or open design questions.
A tracking issue is however not meant for large scale discussion, questions, or bug reports about a feature.
Instead, open a dedicated issue for the specific matter and add the relevant feature gate label.
Discussion comments will get marked as off-topic or deleted.
Repeated discussions on the tracking issue may lead to the tracking issue getting locked.

Steps
Unresolved Questions
  • Should we use fine grained (many) intrinsics for individual information or keep the one big intrinsic returning an enum of the information?
  • what semver implications does all this have and what guarantees of semver do we retain?
  • should we even do this at all? Reflection allows causing monomorphization time errors similar to const { assert!(size_of::<T>(), 5) }, but for much more fine-grained details of a generic parameter T.
  • Is something lifetime-aware even possible at all?
  • Should we use a non-const-eval based scheme (const generics based or even proc macro based?)
Implementation history

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

This is a tracking issue for the type_info goal, using the #![feature(type_info)] feature gate; no implementation file, test, or entry point is named. Start with the linked project goal and implementation-history pull requests, then review the unresolved reflection, lifetime, semver, and intrinsic-design questions; done is defined by the unchecked implementation, RFC, documentation, style, and stabilization milestones.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
rust
Domain
compilers
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
15/100

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