Move wrapper types blog post into trpl

Author: Manishearth

src/doc/rust.css

@@ -221,6 +221,10 @@ a > code {
     color: #428BCA;
 }
 
+.section-header > a > code {
+    color: #8D1A38;
+}
+
 /* Code highlighting */
 pre.rust .kw { color: #8959A8; }
 pre.rust .kw-2, pre.rust .prelude-ty { color: #4271AE; }

src/doc/trpl/SUMMARY.md

@@ -16,6 +16,7 @@
     * [Iterators](iterators.md)
     * [Concurrency](concurrency.md)
     * [Error Handling](error-handling.md)
+    * [Choosing your Guarantees](choosing-your-guarantees.md)
     * [FFI](ffi.md)
     * [Borrow and AsRef](borrow-and-asref.md)
     * [Release Channels](release-channels.md)

src/doc/trpl/choosing-your-guarantees.md

@@ -0,0 +1,354 @@
+% Choosing your Guarantees
+
+One important feature of Rust as language is that it lets us control the costs and guarantees
+of a program.
+
+There are various “wrapper type” abstractions in the Rust standard library which embody
+a multitude of tradeoffs between cost, ergonomics, and guarantees. Many let one choose between
+run time and compile time enforcement. This section will explain a few selected abstractions in
+detail.
+
+Before proceeding, it is highly recommended that one reads about [ownership][ownership] and
+[borrowing][borrowing] in Rust.
+
+[ownership]: ownership.html
+[borrowing]: references-and-borrowing.html
+
+# Basic pointer types
+
+## `Box<T>`
+
+[`Box<T>`][box] is pointer which is &ldquo;owned&rdquo;, or a &ldquo;box&rdquo;. While it can hand
+out references to the contained data, it is the only owner of the data. In particular, when
+something like the following occurs:
+
+```rust
+let x = Box::new(1);
+let y = x;
+// x no longer accessible here
+```
+
+Here, the box was _moved_ into `y`. As `x` no longer owns it, the compiler will no longer allow the
+programmer to use `x` after this. A box can similarly be moved _out_ of a function by returning it.
+
+When a box (that hasn't been moved) goes out of scope, destructors are run. These destructors take
+care of deallocating the inner data.
+
+This is a zero-cost abstraction for dynamic allocation. If you want to allocate some memory on the
+heap and safely pass around a pointer to that memory, this is ideal. Note that you will only be
+allowed to share references to this by the regular borrowing rules, checked at compile time.
+
+[box]: ../std/boxed/struct.Box.html
+
+## `&T` and `&mut T` 
+
+These are immutable and mutable references respectively. They follow the &lquo;read-write lock&rquo;
+pattern, such that one may either have only one mutable reference to some data, or any number of
+immutable ones, but not both. This guarantee is enforced at compile time, and has no visible cost at
+runtime. In most cases these two pointer types suffice for sharing cheap references between sections
+of code.
+
+These pointers cannot be copied in such a way that they outlive the lifetime associated with them.
+
+## `*const T` and `*mut T`
+
+These are C-like raw pointers with no lifetime or ownership attached to them. They just point to
+some location in memory with no other restrictions. The only guarantee that these provide is that
+they cannot be dereferenced except in code marked `unsafe`.
+
+These are useful when building safe, low cost abstractions like `Vec<T>`, but should be avoided in
+safe code.
+
+## `Rc<T>`
+
+This is the first wrapper we will cover that has a runtime cost.
+
+[`Rc<T>`][rc] is a reference counted pointer. In other words, this lets us have multiple "owning"
+pointers to the same data, and the data will be dropped (destructors will be run) when all pointers
+are out of scope.
+
+Internally, it contains a shared &ldquo;reference count&rdquo; (also called &ldquo;refcount&rdquo;),
+which is incremented each time the `Rc` is cloned, and decremented each time one of the `Rc`s goes
+out of scope. The main responsibility of `Rc<T>` is to ensure that destructors are called for shared
+data.
+
+The internal data here is immutable, and if a cycle of references is created, the data will be
+leaked. If we want data that doesn't leak when there are cycles, we need a garbage collector.
+
+#### Guarantees
+
+The main guarantee provided here is that the data will not be destroyed until all references to it
+are out of scope.
+
+This should be used when we wish to dynamically allocate and share some data (read-only) between
+various portions of yur program, where it is not certain which portion will finish using the pointer
+last. It's a viable alternative to `&T` when `&T` is either impossible to statically check for
+correctness, or creates extremely unergonomic code where the programmer does not wish to spend the
+development cost of working with.
+
+This pointer is _not_ thread safe, and Rust will not let it be sent or shared with other threads.
+This lets one avoid the cost of atomics in situations where they are unnecessary.
+
+There is a sister smart pointer to this one, `Weak<T>`. This is a non-owning, but also non-borrowed,
+smart pointer. It is also similar to `&T`, but it is not restricted in lifetime&mdash;a `Weak<T>`
+can be held on to forever. However, it is possible that an attempt to access the inner data may fail
+and return `None`, since this can outlive the owned `Rc`s. This is useful for cyclic
+data structures and other things.
+
+#### Cost
+
+As far as memory goes, `Rc<T>` is a single allocation, though it will allocate two extra words (i.e.
+two `usize` values) as compared to a regular `Box<T>` (for "strong" and "weak" refcounts).
+
+`Rc<T>` has the computational cost of incrementing/decrementing the refcount whenever it is cloned
+or goes out of scope respectively. Note that a clone will not do a deep copy, rather it will simply
+increment the inner reference count and return a copy of the `Rc<T>`.
+
+[rc]: ../std/rc/struct.Rc.html
+
+# Cell types
+
+&lquo;Cell&rquo;s provide interior mutability. In other words, they contain data which can be manipulated even
+if the type cannot be obtained in a mutable form (for example, when it is behind an `&`-ptr or
+`Rc<T>`).
+
+[The documentation for the `cell` module has a pretty good explanation for these][cell-mod].
+
+These types are _generally_ found in struct fields, but they may be found elsewhere too.
+
+## `Cell<T>`
+
+[`Cell<T>`][cell] is a type that provides zero-cost interior mutability, but only for `Copy` types.
+Since the compiler knows that all the data owned by the contained value is on the stack, there's
+no worry of leaking any data behind references (or worse!) by simply replacing the data.
+
+It is still possible to violate your own invariants using this wrapper, so be careful when using it.
+If a field is wrapped in `Cell`, it's a nice indicator that the chunk of data is mutable and may not
+stay the same between the time you first read it and when you intend to use it.
+
+```rust
+let x = Cell::new(1);
+let y = &x;
+let z = &x;
+x.set(2);
+y.set(3);
+z.set(4);
+println!("{}", x.get());
+```
+
+Note that here we were able to mutate the same value from various immutable references.
+
+This has the same runtime cost as the following:
+
+```rust
+let mut x = 1;
+let y = &mut x;
+let z = &mut x;
+x = 2;
+*y = 3;
+*z = 4;
+println!("{}", x;
+```
+
+but it has the added benefit of actually compiling successfully.
+
+#### Guarantees
+
+This relaxes the &ldquo;no aliasing with mutability&rdquo; restriction in places where it's
+unnecessary. However, this also relaxes the guarantees that the restriction provides; so if your
+invariants depend on data stored within `Cell`, you should be careful.
+
+This is useful for mutating primitives and other `Copy` types when there is no easy way of
+doing it in line with the static rules of `&` and `&mut`.
+
+`Cell` does not let you obtain interior references to the data, which makes it safe to freely
+mutate.
+
+#### Cost
+
+There is no runtime cost to using `Cell<T>`, however if you are using it to wrap larger (`Copy`)
+structs, it might be worthwhile to instead wrap individual fields in `Cell<T>` since each write is
+otherwise a full copy of the struct.
+
+
+## `RefCell<T>`
+
+[`RefCell<T>`][refcell] also provides interior mutability, but isn't restricted to `Copy` types.
+
+Instead, it has a runtime cost. `RefCell<T>` enforces the read-write lock pattern at runtime (it's
+like a single-threaded mutex), unlike `&T`/`&mut T` which do so at compile time. This is done by the
+`borrow()` and `borrow_mut()` functions, which modify an internal reference count and return smart
+pointers which can be dereferenced immutably and mutably respectively. The refcount is restored when
+the smart pointers go out of scope. With this system, we can dynamically ensure that there are never
+any other borrows active when a mutable borrow is active. If the programmer attempts to make such a
+borrow, the thread will panic.
+
+```rust
+let x = RefCell::new(vec![1,2,3,4]);
+{
+    println!("{:?}", *x.borrow())
+}
+
+{
+    let my_ref = x.borrow_mut();
+    my_ref.push(1);
+}
+```
+
+Similar to `Cell`, this is mainly useful for situations where it's hard or impossible to satisfy the
+borrow checker. Generally we know that such mutations won't happen in a nested form, but it's good
+to check.
+
+For large, complicated programs, it becomes useful to put some things in `RefCell`s to make things
+simpler. For example, a lot of the maps in [the `ctxt` struct][ctxt] in the rust compiler internals
+are inside this wrapper. These are only modified once (during creation, which is not right after
+initialization) or a couple of times in well-separated places. However, since this struct is
+pervasively used everywhere, juggling mutable and immutable pointers would be hard (perhaps
+impossible) and probably form a soup of `&`-ptrs which would be hard to extend. On the other hand,
+the `RefCell` provides a cheap (not zero-cost) way of safely accessing these. In the future, if
+someone adds some code that attempts to modify the cell when it's already borrowed, it will cause a
+(usually deterministic) panic which can be traced back to the offending borrow.
+
+Similarly, in Servo's DOM there is a lot of mutation, most of which is local to a DOM type, but some
+of which crisscrosses the DOM and modifies various things. Using `RefCell` and `Cell` to guard all
+mutation lets us avoid worrying about mutability everywhere, and it simultaneously highlights the
+places where mutation is _actually_ happening.
+
+Note that `RefCell` should be avoided if a mostly simple solution is possible with `&` pointers.
+
+#### Guarantees
+
+`RefCell` relaxes the _static_ restrictions preventing aliased mutation, and replaces them with
+_dynamic_ ones. As such the guarantees have not changed.
+
+#### Cost
+
+`RefCell` does not allocate, but it contains an additional "borrow state"
+indicator (one word in size) along with the data.
+
+At runtime each borrow causes a modification/check of the refcount.
+
+[cell-mod]: ../std/cell/
+[cell]: ../std/cell/struct.Cell.html
+[refcell]: ../std/cell/struct.RefCell.html
+[ctxt]: ../rustc/middle/ty/struct.ctxt.html
+
+# Synchronous types
+
+Many of the types above cannot be used in a threadsafe manner. Particularly, `Rc<T>` and
+`RefCell<T>`, which both use non-atomic reference counts (_atomic_ reference counts are those which
+can be incremented from multiple threads without causing a data race), cannot be used this way. This
+makes them cheaper to use, but we need thread safe versions of these too. They exist, in the form of
+`Arc<T>` and `Mutex<T>`/`RWLock<T>`
+
+Note that the non-threadsafe types _cannot_ be sent between threads, and this is checked at compile
+time.
+
+There are many useful wrappers for concurrent programming in the [sync][sync] module, but only the
+major ones will be covered below.
+
+[sync]: ../std/sync/index.html
+
+## `Arc<T>`
+
+[`Arc<T>`][arc] is just a version of `Rc<T>` that uses an atomic reference count (hence, "Arc").
+This can be sent freely between threads.
+
+C++'s `shared_ptr` is similar to `Arc`, however in the case of C++ the inner data is always mutable.
+For semantics similar to that from C++, we should use `Arc<Mutex<T>>`, `Arc<RwLock<T>>`, or
+`Arc<UnsafeCell<T>>`[^4] (`UnsafeCell<T>` is a cell type that can be used to hold any data and has
+no runtime cost, but accessing it requires `unsafe` blocks). The last one should only be used if we
+are certain that the usage won't cause any memory unsafety. Remember that writing to a struct is not
+an atomic operation, and many functions like `vec.push()` can reallocate internally and cause unsafe
+behavior, so even monotonicity may not be enough to justify `UnsafeCell`.
+
+[^4]: `Arc<UnsafeCell<T>>` actually won't compile since `UnsafeCell<T>` isn't `Send` or `Sync`, but we can wrap it in a type and implement `Send`/`Sync` for it manually to get `Arc<Wrapper<T>>` where `Wrapper` is `struct Wrapper<T>(UnsafeCell<T>)`.
+
+#### Guarantees
+
+Like `Rc`, this provides the (thread safe) guarantee that the destructor for the internal data will
+be run when the last `Arc` goes out of scope (barring any cycles).
+
+#### Cost
+
+This has the added cost of using atomics for changing the refcount (which will happen whenever it is
+cloned or goes out of scope). When sharing data from an `Arc` in a single thread, it is preferable
+to share `&` pointers whenever possible.
+
+[arc]: ../std/sync/struct.Arc.html
+
+## `Mutex<T>` and `RwLock<T>`
+
+[`Mutex<T>`][mutex] and [`RwLock<T>`][rwlock] provide mutual-exclusion via RAII guards (guards are
+objects which maintain some state, like a lock, until their destructor is called). For both of
+these, the mutex is opaque until we call `lock()` on it, at which point the thread will block
+until a lock can be acquired, and then a guard will be returned. This guard can be used to access
+the inner data (mutably), and the lock will be released when the guard goes out of scope.
+
+```rust
+{
+    let guard = mutex.lock();
+    // guard dereferences mutably to the inner type
+    *guard += 1;
+} // lock released when destructor runs
+```
+
+
+`RwLock` has the added benefit of being efficient for multiple reads. It is always safe to have
+multiple readers to shared data as long as there are no writers; and `RwLock` lets readers acquire a
+"read lock". Such locks can be acquired concurrently and are kept track of via a reference count.
+Writers must obtain a "write lock" which can only be obtained when all readers have gone out of
+scope.
+
+#### Guarantees
+
+Both of these provide safe shared mutability across threads, however they are prone to deadlocks.
+Some level of additional protocol safety can be obtained via the type system.
+#### Costs
+
+These use internal atomic-like types to maintain the locks, which are pretty costly (they can block
+all memory reads across processors till they're done). Waiting on these locks can also be slow when
+there's a lot of concurrent access happening.
+
+[rwlock]: ../std/sync/struct.RwLock.html
+[mutex]: ../std/sync/struct.Mutex.html
+[sessions]: https://github.com/Munksgaard/rust-sessions
+
+# Composition
+
+A common gripe when reading Rust code is with types like `Rc<RefCell<Vec<T>>>` (or even more more
+complicated compositions of such types). It's not always clear what the composition does, or why the
+author chose one like this (and when one should be using such a composition in one's own code)
+
+Usually, it's a case of composing together the guarantees that you need, without paying for stuff
+that is unnecessary.
+
+For example, `Rc<RefCell<T>>` is one such composition. `Rc<T>` itself can't be dereferenced mutably;
+because `Rc<T>` provides sharing and shared mutability can lead to unsafe behavior, so we put
+`RefCell<T>` inside to get dynamically verified shared mutability. Now we have shared mutable data,
+but it's shared in a way that there can only be one mutator (and no readers) or multiple readers.
+
+Now, we can take this a step further, and have `Rc<RefCell<Vec<T>>>` or `Rc<Vec<RefCell<T>>>`. These
+are both shareable, mutable vectors, but they're not the same.
+
+With the former, the `RefCell<T>` is wrapping the `Vec<T>`, so the `Vec<T>` in its entirety is
+mutable. At the same time, there can only be one mutable borrow of the whole `Vec` at a given time.
+This means that your code cannot simultaneously work on different elements of the vector from
+different `Rc` handles. However, we are able to push and pop from the `Vec<T>` at will. This is
+similar to an `&mut Vec<T>` with the borrow checking done at runtime.
+
+With the latter, the borrowing is of individual elements, but the overall vector is immutable. Thus,
+we can independently borrow separate elements, but we cannot push or pop from the vector. This is
+similar to an `&mut [T]`[^3], but, again, the borrow checking is at runtime.
+
+In concurrent programs, we have a similar situation with `Arc<Mutex<T>>`, which provides shared
+mutability and ownership.
+
+When reading code that uses these, go in step by step and look at the guarantees/costs provided.
+
+When choosing a composed type, we must do the reverse; figure out which guarantees we want, and at
+which point of the composition we need them. For example, if there is a choice between
+`Vec<RefCell<T>>` and `RefCell<Vec<T>>`, we should figure out the tradeoffs as done above and pick
+one.
+
+[^3]: `&[T]` and `&mut [T]` are _slices_; they consist of a pointer and a length and can refer to a portion of a vector or array. `&mut [T]` can have its elements mutated, however its length cannot be touched.