Rust-clippy: `borrowed_box` lint and `Any`

[stanislav-tkach]

I'm not sure that this is an issue, but it can be a little confusing.

I have the following situation: there is a function that works with panic::catch_unwind error (Box<Any + Send + 'static>):

fn foo(e: &Box<Any + Send>) {
    if let Some(s) = e.as_ref().downcast_ref::<&str>() { ... }
    ...
}

Clippy suggests the following:

warning: you seem to be trying to use `&Box<T>`. Consider using just `&T`
 --> src/main.rs:4:11
  |
4 | fn foo(e: &Box<Any + Send>) {
  |           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ help: try `&Any + Send`

Functions becomes more generic, that for sure, but Any is a specific type: foo call site must be updated otherwise instead of Any that contains a panic error it will take Any that contains Box<Any + Send>.

Probably borrowed_box lint should be disabled for Any type?

[oli-obk]

hmm... that definitely is a footgun. Let's special case Any

[stanislav-tkach]

I would like to try to fix this. :smile:

[oli-obk]

Great! It's probably enough to extract the boxed type (see the boxed_ty() method on Ty) and check whether it's a http://manishearth.github.io/rust-internals-docs/rustc/ty/enum.TypeVariants.html#variant.TyDynamic . The big question is how to figure out whether it's a specific trait. Look around the other lints, especially any doing something with TyDynamic.

[stanislav-tkach]

@oli-obk
Sorry, I haven't had time too look at this lately. 😅 And now I'm a little bit stuck here.

You propose to use TyDynamic, but as I can see, in the code rustc::hir::Ty is used, so it is easy to check node type (rustc::hir::Ty_) for TyTraitObject. Is it a right way or not? Probably not, because I cannot find a way to check for the specific trait with TyTraitObject.

As for TyDynamic: check_ty function (inside of which borrowed_box lint is spanned) takes hir::Ty and for boxed_ty I need rustc::ty::TyS. How do I get it?

[oli-obk]

Ah right. You need to distinguish between syntactial types and actual types. Syntactical types are what you enter in the code (e.g. Foo for a struct's name). Actual types aren't just a name, but they represent the type with its fields and everything.

You should be able to get the real type via cx.tables.node_id_to_type(ty.id)