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Merge pull request #1817 from SergioBenitez/master
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Amend #1440: allow `const` items to contain drop types.
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aturon authored Jul 25, 2017
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# Summary
[summary]: #summary

Allow types with destructors to be used in `static` items and in `const` functions, as long as the destructor never needs to run in const context.
Allow types with destructors to be used in `static` items, `const` items, and `const` functions.

# Motivation
[motivation]: #motivation

Some of the collection types do not allocate any memory when constructed empty (most notably `Vec`). With the change to make leaking safe, the restriction on `static` items with destructors
Some of the collection types do not allocate any memory when constructed empty (most notably `Vec`). With the change to make leaking safe, the restriction on `static` or `const` items with destructors
is no longer required to be a hard error (as it is safe and accepted that these destructors may never run).

Allowing types with destructors to be directly used in `const` functions and stored in `static`s will remove the need to have
Allowing types with destructors to be directly used in `const` functions and stored in `static`s or `const`s will remove the need to have
runtime-initialisation for global variables.

# Detailed design
[design]: #detailed-design

- Lift the restriction on types with destructors being used in statics.
- Lift the restriction on types with destructors being used in `static` or `const` items.
- `static`s containing Drop-types will not run the destructor upon program/thread exit.
- `const`s containing Drop-types _will_ run the destructor at the appropriate point in the program.
- (Optionally adding a lint that warn about the possibility of resource leak)
- Alloc instantiating structures with destructors in constant expressions,
- Continue to prevent `const` items from holding types with destructors.
- Allow `const fn` to return types with destructors.
- Disallow constant expressions which would result in the destructor being called (if the code were run at runtime).
- Disallow constant expressions that require destructors to run during compile-time constant evaluation (i.e: a `drop(foo)` in a `const fn`).

## Examples
Assuming that `RwLock` and `Vec` have `const fn new` methods, the following example is possible and avoids runtime validity checks.
Expand All @@ -38,12 38,14 @@ trait LogHandler: Send Sync {
}
/// List of registered logging handlers
static S_LOGGERS: RwLock<Vec< Box<LogHandler> >> = RwLock::new( Vec::new() );

/// Just an empty byte vector.
const EMPTY_BYTE_VEC: Vec<u8> = Vec::new();
```

Disallowed code
```rust
static VAL: usize = (Vec::<u8>::new(), 0).1; // The `Vec` would be dropped
const EMPTY_BYTE_VEC: Vec<u8> = Vec::new(); // `const` items can't have destructors

const fn sample(_v: Vec<u8>) -> usize {
0 // Discards the input vector, dropping it
Expand All @@ -55,6 57,8 @@ const fn sample(_v: Vec<u8>) -> usize {

Destructors do not run on `static` items (by design), so this can lead to unexpected behavior when a type's destructor has effects outside the program (e.g. a RAII temporary folder handle, which deletes the folder on drop). However, this can already happen using the `lazy_static` crate.

A `const` item's destructor _will_ run at each point where the `const` item is used. If a `const` item is never used, its destructor will never run. These behaviors may be unexpected.

# Alternatives
[alternatives]: #alternatives

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