The destruction guarantee and linear types formulation

Myosotis

Background

Currently there is a consensus about absence of the drop guarantee. To be precise, in today's Rust you can forget some value via core::mem::forget or via some other safe contraption like cyclic shared references Rc/Arc.

As you may know in the early days of Rust the destruction guarantee was intended to exist. Instead of today's std::thread::scope there was std::thread::scoped which worked in a similar manner, except it used a guard value with a drop implementation to join the spawned thread so that it wouldn't refer to any local stack variable after the parent thread exited the scope and destroyed them, but due to absence of the drop guarantee it was found to be unsound and was removed from standard library.^[1] Let's name these two approaches as guarded closure and guard object. Also to note C++20 has analogous std::jthread guard object.

There is also a discussion among Rust theorists about linear types which leads them researching (or maybe revisiting) the possible Leak trait. I've noticed some confusion and thus hesitation when people are trying to define what does leaking a value mean. I will try to clarify and define what does leak actually mean.

Problem

There is a class of problems that we will try to solve. In particular, we return some object from a function or a method that mutably (exclusively) borrows one of function arguments. While returned object is alive we could not refer to borrowed value, which can be a useful property to exploit. You can invalidate some invariant of a borrowed type but then you restore it inside of returned object's drop. This is a fine concept until you realize in some circumstances drop is not called, which would in turn mean that the borrowed type invariant invalidation may never cause undefined behavior (UB in short) if left untreated. However, if drop is guaranteed, we could mess with borrowed type invariant, knowing that the cleanup will restore the invariant and make impossible to cause UB after. I found one example of this as once mentioned planned feature Vec::drain_range.

One other special case would be owned scoped thread. It may be included within class of problems mentioned, but I am not sure. Anyway, in the most trivial case this is the same as once deleted std::thread::{scoped, JoinGuard} described above. However, many C APIs may in some sense use this via the callback registration pattern, most common for multithreaded client handles. Absence of a drop guarantee thus implies 'static lifetime for a callback so that the user wouldn't use invalidated references inside of the callback, if client uses guard object API pattern^P.S. (see example).

Solution

From now on I will use the term "destruction guarantee" instead of the "drop guarantee" because it more precisely describes the underlying concept. The difference between drop and destruction is that first only relates to drop functionality of Rust, while latter can relate to those and any consuming function that destroys object in sense of how it is defined by library authors, in other words a destructor. Such destructors may even disable drop code and cleanup in some other way.

Most importantly in these two cases objects with the destruction guarantee would be bounded by lifetime arguments. So to define the destruction guarantee:

Destruction guarantee asserts that bounding lifetime of an object
must end only after object is destroyed by drop or any other valid
destructor. Somehow breaking this guarantee can lead to UB.

Notice what this implies for T: 'static types. Since static lifetime never ends or ends only after end of program's execution, the drop may never be called. This property does not conflict with described use cases. JoinGuard<'static, T> indeed doesn't require to ever be destroyed, since there would be no references that would ever be invalidated.

In the context of discussion around Leak trait some argue it is possible to implement core::mem::forget via threads and an infinite loop.^[2] That forget implementation won't violate a destruction guarantee as defined above, since either you use regular threads which require F: 'static or use scoped threads which would join this never completing thread thus no drop and no lifetime end. That definition only establishes order between object's destruction and end of a lifetime, but not existence of a lifetime's end inside of any execution time. My further advice would be in general to think not in terms of execution time but in terms of semantic lifetimes, which role would be to conservatively establish order of events if those ever exist. Alternatively you will be fundamentally limited by the halting problem.

On the topic of abort or exit, it shouldn't be considered an end to any lifetime, since otherwise abort and even spontaneous termination of a program like SIGTERM becomes unsafe.

To move forward let's determine required conditions for destruction guarantee. Rust language already makes sure you could never use a value which bounding lifetime has ended. Drop as a fallback to other destructors is only ever run on owned values, so for a drop to run on a value, the value should preserve transitive ownership of it by functions' stack/local values. If you familiar with tracing garbage collection this is similar to it, so that the required alive value should be traceable from function stack. The value has to not own itself or be owned by something that would own itself, at least before the end of its bounding lifetime, otherwise drop would not be called. Last statement could be simplified, given that owner of a value transitively must also satisfy these requirements, leaving us with just the value has to not own itself. Also reminding you that 'static values can be moved into static context like static variables, which lifetime exceeds lifetime of a program's execution itself, so consider that analogous to calling std::process::exit() before 'static ends.

Trivial implementation

One trivial implementation might have already crept into your mind.

#![feature(auto_traits, negative_impls)]

use core::marker::PhantomData;

unsafe auto trait Leak {}

#[repr(transparent)]
#[derive(Default, Debug, Clone, Copy, PartialEq, Eq, PartialOrd, Ord, Hash)]
pub struct Unleak<T>(pub T, PhantomUnleak);

impl<T> Unleak<T> {
    pub const fn new(v: T) -> Self {
        Unleak(v, PhantomUnleak)
    }
}

// This is the essential part of the `Unleak` design.
unsafe impl<T: 'static> Leak for Unleak<T> {}

#[derive(Default, Debug, Clone, Copy, PartialEq, Eq, PartialOrd, Ord, Hash)]
struct PhantomUnleak;

impl !Leak for PhantomUnleak {}

struct Variance<Contra, Co> {
    process: fn(Contra) -> String,
    // invalidate `Co` type's safety invariant before restoring it
    // inside of the drop
    queue: Unleak<Co>,
}

struct VarianceAlt<Contra, Co> {
    process: fn(Contra) -> String,
    queue: Co,
    _unleak: PhantomUnleak,
}

unsafe impl<Contra, Co: 'static> Leak for VarianceAlt<Contra, Co> {}

// not sure about variance here
struct JoinGuard<'a, T: 'a> {
    // ...
    _marker: PhantomData<fn() -> T>,
    _unleak: PhantomData<Unleak<&'a ()>>,
    _unsend: PhantomData<*mut ()>,
}

unsafe impl<T: 'static> Send for JoinGuard<'static, T> {}
unsafe impl<'a, T> Sync for JoinGuard<'a, T> {}

// We are outside of the main function
fn main() {}

This is an automatic trait, which would mean that it is implemented for types in a similar manner to Send.^[3] Name Leak is a subject for a possible future change. I used it as it came up in many people's thoughts as Leak. Since T: !Leak types possibly could leak in a practical meaning, it can be renamed into Forget. Other variants could be Lose, !Trace or !Reach (last two as in tracing GC), maybe add -able suffix?^P.S.

This trait would help to forbid !Leak values from using problematic functionality:

• Obviously core::mem::forget should have a T: Leak over its generic type argument;
• core::mem::ManuallyDrop::new should have leak bound over input type, but intrinsically maybe author has some destructor besides the drop that would benefit from ManuallyDrop::new_unchecked fallback;
• Rc and Arc may themselves be put inside of the contained value, creating an ownership loop, although there should probably be an unsafe (constructors) fallback in case ownership cycles are guaranteed to be broken before cleanup;
• Channel types like inside of std::sync::mpsc with a shared buffer of T are problematic since you can send a receiver through its sender back to itself, thus creating an ownership cycle leaking that shared buffer;
  • Rendezvous channels seem to lack this flaw because they wait for other thread/task to be ready to take a value instead of running off right after sending it;

In any case the library itself dictates appropriate bounds for its types.

Given that !Leak implies new restrictions compared to current Rust value semantics, by default every type is assumed to be T: Leak, kinda like with Sized, e.g. implicit Leak trait bound on every type and type argument unless specified otherwise (T: ?Leak). I pretty sure this feature should not introduce any breaking changes. This means working with new !Leak types is opt-in, kinda like library APIs may consider adding ?Sized support after release. There could be a way to disable implicit T: Leak bounds between editions, although I do not see it as a desirable change, since !Leak types would be a small minority in my vision.

The Unleak wrapper type

To make !Leak struct you would need to use new Unleak wrapper type:

#[repr(transparent)]
#[derive(Default, Debug, Clone, Copy, PartialEq, Eq, PartialOrd, Ord, Hash)]
pub struct Unleak<T>(pub T, PhantomUnleak);

impl<T> Unleak<T> {
    pub const fn new(v: T) -> Self {
        Unleak(v, PhantomUnleak)
    }
}

// This is the essential part of the `Unleak` design.
unsafe impl<T: 'static> Leak for Unleak<T> {}

#[derive(Default, Debug, Clone, Copy, PartialEq, Eq, PartialOrd, Ord, Hash)]
struct PhantomUnleak;

impl !Leak for PhantomUnleak {}

This wrapper makes it easy to define !Leak data structures. It implements Leak for 'static case for you. As a rule of thumb you determine which field (it should contain struct's lifetime or generic type argument) would require the destruction guarantee, so if you invalidate safety invariant of a borrowed type, make sure this borrow is under Unleak. To illustrate how Unleak helps you could look at this example:

struct Variance<Contra, Co> {
    process: fn(Contra) -> String,
    // invalidate `Co` type's safety invariant before restoring it
    // inside of the drop
    queue: Unleak<Co>,
}

If you aware of variance then you should know that contravariant lifetimes (which are placed inside of arguments of a function pointer) can be extended via subtyping up to the 'static lifetime, it is also applied to lifetime bounds of generic type arguments. So it should be useless to mark this function pointer with Unleak. If we just had PhantomUnleak there - this is what example above would look like instead:

struct VarianceAlt<Contra, Co> {
    process: fn(Contra) -> String,
    queue: Co,
    _unleak: PhantomUnleak,
}

unsafe impl<Contra, Co: 'static> Leak for VarianceAlt<Contra, Co> {}

It now requires unsafe impl with a bit unclear type bounds. If user forgets to add the Leak implementation the type would become restricted as any !Leak type even if type itself 'static, granting nothing of value. If user messes up and doesn't add appropriate 'static bounds, It may lead to unsound API. Unleak on the other hand automatically ensures that T: 'static => T: Leak. So the PhantomUnleak should probably be private/unstable.

Now given this a bit awkward situation about T: 'static => T: Leak, impl and dyn trait types can sometimes be meaningless like Box<dyn Debug + ?Leak> or -> impl Debug + ?Leak because those are static unless you add + 'a explicit lifetime bound, so there probably should be a lint that would warn user about that.

One thing that we should be aware of in the future would be users' desire of making their types !Leak while not actually needing it. The appropriate example would be MutexGuard<'a, T> being !Leak. It is not required, since it is actually safe to forget a value of this type or to never unlock a mutex, but it can exist. In this case, you can safely violate !Leak bound, making it useless in practice. Thus unnecessary !Leak impls should be avoided. To address users' underlying itch to do this, they should be informed that forgetting or leaking a value is already undesirable and can be considered a logic bug.

Of course there should be an unsafe core::mem::forget_unchecked for any value if you really know what you're doing, because there are some ways to implement core::mem::forget for any type with unsafe code still, for example with core::ptr::write. There should also probably be safe core::mem::forget_static since you can basically do that using thread with an endless loop. However ?Leak types implement Leak for static lifetimes transitively from Unleak to satisfy any function's bounds over types.

// not sure about variance here
struct JoinGuard<'a, T: 'a> {
    // ...
    _marker: PhantomData<fn() -> T>,
    _unleak: PhantomData<Unleak<&'a ()>>,
}

While implementing !Leak types you should also make sure you cannot move a value of this type into itself. In particular JoinGuard may be made !Send to ensure that user won't send JoinGuard into its inner thread, creating a reference to itself, thus escaping from a parent thread while having live references to parent thread local variables.

// not sure about variance here
struct JoinGuard<'a, T: 'a> {
    // ...
    _marker: PhantomData<fn() -> T>,
    _unleak: PhantomData<Unleak<&'a ()>>,
    _unsend: PhantomData<*mut ()>,
}

unsafe impl<T: 'static> Send for JoinGuard<'static, T> {}
unsafe impl<'a, T> Sync for JoinGuard<'a, T> {}

There is also a way to forbid JoinGuard from moving into its thread if we bound it by a different lifetime which is shorter than input closure's lifetime. See prototyped thread::SendJoinGuard in leak-playground docs and repo. Because there's no Leak trait outside of this repo and external libraries cannot account for it, !Leak types usage safety is enforced manually sometimes. There're also some new possible features for tokio in leak_playground_tokio like non-static task support. The doctest code behaves as intended (except for internally unleak future examples), but I have no formal proof of it being 100% valid.

One other consequence would be that if a drop of a !Leak object panics it should be safe to use the referred to object, basically meaning that panic or unwind is a valid exit path from the drop implementation. If !Leak type invalidates some safe type invariant of a borrowed object, then even if the drop implementation panics, it should restore this invariant, maybe even by replacing the borrowed value with a default or an empty value or with a good old manual std::process::abort. If designed otherwise the code should abort on a panic from a drop of !Leak value. So you would have to be careful with panics too. This also applies to any other destructor.

Internally Unleak coroutines

Consider one other example from leak_playground_std:

fn _internal_unleak_future() -> impl std::future::Future<Output = ()> + Leak {
    async {
        let num = std::hint::black_box(0);
        let bor = Unleak::new(&num);
        let () = std::future::pending().await;
        assert_eq!(*bor.0, 0);
    }
}

During the execution of a future, local variables have non-static lifetimes, however after future yields these lifetimes become static unless they refer to something outside of it^P.S.. This is an example of sound and safe lifetime extension thus making the whole future Leak. However, if when we use JoinGuard it becomes a little bit trickier:

fn _internal_join_guard_future() -> impl std::future::Future<Output = ()> + Leak {
    async {
        let local = 42;
        let thrd = JoinGuard::spawn({
            let local = &local;
            move || {
                let _inner_local = local;
            }
        });
        let () = std::future::pending().await;
        drop(thrd); // This statement is for verbosity and `thrd`
                    // should drop there implicitly anyway
    }
}

Code above may lead to use-after-free if we forget this future, meaning that memory holding this future is deallocated without cancelling (i.e. dropping) this future first, thus spawned thrd now refers to the future's deallocated local state, since we haven't joined this thread. But remember that self-referential (!Unpin) future is pinned forever after it starts, which means that it is guaranteed there is no way (or at least should be no way) to forget and deallocate the underlying value in safe code (see pin's drop guarantee). However outside of rust-lang project some people would not follow this rule because they don't know about it or maybe discard it purposefully (the Rust police is coming for you). Maybe in the future it would be possible to somehow relax this rule in some cases, but it would be a different problem.

Extensions and alternatives

DISCLAIMER: This section is optional as it contains unpolished concepts, which are not essential for understanding the overall design of proposed feature.

Disowns (and NeverGives) trait(s)

If you think about Rc long enough, the T: Leak bound will start to feel unnecessary strong. Maybe we could add a trait that signify that your type can never own Rc of self, which would allow us to have a new bound:

impl<T> Rc<T> {
    fn new(v: T) -> Self
    where
        T: Disowns<Rc<T>>
    {
        // ...
    }
}

By analogy with that to make sure closure that you pass into a spawned thread should never capture anything that can give you join guard:

pub fn scoped<F>(f: F) -> JoinGuard<F>
where
    F: NeverGives<JoinGuard<F>>
{
    // ...
}

To help you with understanding:

<fn(T)>: NeverGives<T> + Disowns<T>,
<fn() -> T>: !NeverGives<T> + Disowns<T>,
T: !NeverGives<T> + !Disowns<T>,
trait NeverGives<T>: Disowns<T>,

Custom Rc trait

Or, to generalize, maybe there should be a custom automatic trait for Rc, so that anything that implements it is safely allowed to be held within Rc:

impl<T> Rc<T> {
    fn new(v: T) -> Self
    where
        T: AllowedInRc
    {
        // ...
    }
}

impl<T> Arc<T> {
    fn new(v: T) -> Self
    where
        T: AllowedInRc + Send + Sync
    {
        // ...
    }
}

Ranked Leak trait

While we may allow T: Leak types to be held within Rc, U: Leak2 would be not given that Rc<T>: Leak2. And so on. This allows us to forbid recursive types but also forbids nested enough within Rcs data types. This is similar to von Neumann hierarchy of sets as sets there have some rank ordinal. Maybe there could be unsafe auto trait Leak<const N: usize> {} for that?

Turning drop invocations into compiler errors

Perhaps we could have some automatic trait RoutineDrop which if unimplemented for a type means that dropping this value would result in a compiler error. This may be useful with hypothetical async drop. It could also help expand linear type functionality.

Forward compatibility

Since I wrote this text in terms of destructors, it should be play nicely with hypothetical async drop. Then it could be the case that JoinGuard logic can be extended to analogous AwaitGuard representing async tasks.

Possible problems

Some current std library functionality relies upon forgetting values, like Vec does it in some cases like panic during element's drop. I'm not sure if anyone relies upon this, so we could use abort instead. Or instead we can add std::mem::is_leak::<T>() -> bool to determine if we can forget values or not and then act accordingly.

Currently internally unleak futures examples emit errors where they shouldn't or should emit different errors, so I guess some compiler hacking is required. There could also be some niche compilation case, where compiler assumes every type is Leak and purposefully forgets a value.

Terminology

^ Linear type

Value of which should be used at least once, generally speaking. Use is usually defined within the context.

^ Drop guarantee

Guarantee that drop is run on every created value unless value's drop is a noop.

This text uses this term only in reference to older discussions. I use destruction guarantee instead to be more precise and to avoid confusion in future discussions about async drop.

^ Guarded closure

A pattern of a safe library API in Rust. It is a mechanism to guarantee library's cleanup code is run after user code (closure) used some special object. It is usually used only in situations when this guarantee is required to achieve API safety, because it is unnecessary unwieldy otherwise.

// WARNING: Yes I know you can rewrite this more efficiently, it's just a demonstration

fn main() {
    let mut a = 0;
    foo::scope(|foo| {
        for _ in 0..10 {
            a += foo.get_secret();
            // cannot forget(foo) since we only have a reference to it
        }
    });
    println!("a = {a}");
}

// Implementation

mod foo {
    use std::marker::PhantomData;
    use std::panic::{catch_unwind, resume_unwind, AssertUnwindSafe};

    pub struct Foo<'scope, 'env> {
        secret: u32,
        // use lifetimes to avoid the error
        // strange lifetimes to achieve invariance over them
        _scope: PhantomData<&'scope mut &'scope ()>,
        _env: PhantomData<&'env mut &'env ()>,
    }

    impl Foo<'_, '_> {
        pub fn get_secret(&self) -> u32 {
            // There should be much more complex code
            self.secret
        }

        fn cleanup(&self) {
            println!("Foo::cleanup");
        }
    }

    pub fn scope<'env, F, T>(f: F) -> T
    where
        F: for<'scope> FnOnce(&'scope Foo<'scope, 'env>) -> T,
    {
        let foo = Foo {
            secret: 42,
            _scope: PhantomData,
            _env: PhantomData,
        };

        // AssertUnwindSafe is fine because we rethrow the panic
        let res = catch_unwind(AssertUnwindSafe(|| f(&foo)));

        foo.cleanup();

        match res {
            Ok(v) => v,
            Err(payload) => resume_unwind(payload),
        }
    }
}

Output:

Foo::cleanup
a = 420

^ Guard object

A pattern of library APIs like std::sync::MutexGuard. Usually these borrow some local state (like std::sync::Mutex) and restore it within its drop implementation. Since Rust value semantics allow objects to be forgotten, cleanup code within the drop implementation should not be essential to preserve safety of your API.

However this proposal aims to relax this restriction, given a new backwards-compatible set of rules.

^ Callback registration

A pattern of library APIs, especially in C. It is usually represented as setting some function as a callback to incoming response for some client handle. tigerbeetle_unofficial_core::Client would be an example of that.

^ Undefined behavior or UB

Wikipedia explains it better than me.

References

Postscript

Credits

Thanks to @petrochenkov for reviewing and discussing this proposal with me.