Module rustc_middle::dep_graph::dep_node

This module defines the DepNode type which the compiler uses to represent nodes in the dependency graph.

A DepNode consists of a DepKind (which specifies the kind of thing it represents, like a piece of HIR, MIR, etc) and a Fingerprint, a 128-bit hash value the exact meaning of which depends on the node's DepKind. Together, the kind and the fingerprint fully identify a dependency node, even across multiple compilation sessions. In other words, the value of the fingerprint does not depend on anything that is specific to a given compilation session, like an unpredictable interning key (e.g., NodeId, DefId, Symbol) or the numeric value of a pointer. The concept behind this could be compared to how git commit hashes uniquely identify a given commit and has a few advantages:

• A DepNode can simply be serialized to disk and loaded in another session without the need to do any "rebasing" (like we have to do for Spans and NodeIds) or "retracing" (like we had to do for DefId in earlier implementations of the dependency graph).
• A Fingerprint is just a bunch of bits, which allows DepNode to implement Copy, Sync, Send, Freeze, etc.
• Since we just have a bit pattern, DepNode can be mapped from disk into memory without any post-processing (e.g., "abomination-style" pointer reconstruction).
• Because a DepNode is self-contained, we can instantiate DepNodes that refer to things that do not exist anymore. In previous implementations DepNode contained a DefId. A DepNode referring to something that had been removed between the previous and the current compilation session could not be instantiated because the current compilation session contained no DefId for thing that had been removed.

DepNode definition happens in the define_dep_nodes!() macro. This macro defines the DepKind enum and a corresponding DepConstructor enum. The DepConstructor enum links a DepKind to the parameters that are needed at runtime in order to construct a valid DepNode fingerprint.

Because the macro sees what parameters a given DepKind requires, it can "infer" some properties for each kind of DepNode:

• Whether a DepNode of a given kind has any parameters at all. Some DepNodes could represent global concepts with only one value.
• Whether it is possible, in principle, to reconstruct a query key from a given DepNode. Many DepKinds only require a single DefId parameter, in which case it is possible to map the node's fingerprint back to the DefId it was computed from. In other cases, too much information gets lost during fingerprint computation.

The DepConstructor enum, together with DepNode::new(), ensures that only valid DepNode instances can be constructed. For example, the API does not allow for constructing parameterless DepNodes with anything other than a zeroed out fingerprint. More generally speaking, it relieves the user of the DepNode API of having to know how to compute the expected fingerprint for a given set of node parameters.

Modules

label_strs

Contains variant => str representations for constructing DepNode groups for tests.

Structs

DepConstructor

Enums

DepKind

Traits

DepContext
DepNodeExt
DepNodeParams

Type Definitions

DepNode