Document serialization in rustc

src/SUMMARY.md

@@ -58,6 +58,7 @@
     - [Profiling Queries](./queries/profiling.md)
     - [Salsa](./salsa.md)
 - [Memory Management in Rustc](./memory.md)
+- [Serialization in Rustc](./serialization.md)
 - [Parallel Compilation](./parallel-rustc.md)
 - [Rustdoc](./rustdoc-internals.md)
 

src/serialization.md

@@ -0,0 +1,164 @@
+# Serialization in Rustc
+
+Rustc has to [serialize] and deserialize various data during compilation.
+Specifically:
+
+- "Crate metadata", mainly query outputs, are serialized in a binary
+  format into `rlib` and `rmeta` files that are output when compiling a library
+  crate, these are then deserialized by crates that depend on that library.
+- Certain query outputs are serialized in a binary format to
+  [persist incremental compilation results].
+- The `-Z ast-json` and `-Z ast-json-noexpand` flags serialize the [AST] to json
+  and output the result to stdout.
+- [`CrateInfo`] is serialized to json when the `-Z no-link` flag is used, and
+  deserialized from json when the `-Z link-only` flag is used.
+
+## The `Encodable` and `Decodable` traits
+
+The [`rustc_serialize`] crate defines two traits for types which can be serialized:
+
+```rust,ignore
+pub trait Encodable<S: Encoder> {
+    fn encode(&self, s: &mut S) -> Result<(), S::Error>;
+}
+
+pub trait Decodable<D: Decoder>: Sized {
+    fn decode(d: &mut D) -> Result<Self, D::Error>;
+}
+```
+
+It also defines implementations of these for integer types, floating point
+types, `bool`, `char`, `str` and various common standard library types.
+
+For types that are constructed from those types, `Encodable` and `Decodable` are
+usually implemented by [derives]. These generate implementations that forward
+deserialization to the fields of the struct or enum. For a struct those impls
+look something like this:
+
+```rust,ingore
+# #![feature(rustc_private)]
+# extern crate rustc_serialize;
+# use rustc_serialize::{Decodable, Decoder, Encodable, Encoder};
+
+struct MyStruct {
+    int: u32,
+    float: f32,
+}
+
+impl<E: Encoder> Encodable<E> for MyStruct {
+    fn encode(&self, s: &mut E) -> Result<(), E::Error> {
+        s.emit_struct("MyStruct", 2, |s| {
+            s.emit_struct_field("int", 0, |s| self.int.encode(s))?;
+            s.emit_struct_field("float", 1, |s| self.float.encode(s))
+        })
+    }
+}
+impl<D: Decoder> Decodable<D> for MyStruct {
+    fn decode(s: &mut D) -> Result<MyStruct, D::Error> {
+        s.read_struct("MyStruct", 2, |d| {
+            let int = d.read_struct_field("int", 0, Decodable::decode)?;
+            let float = d.read_struct_field("float", 1, Decodable::decode)?;
+
+            Ok(MyStruct { int, float })
+        })
+    }
+}
+```
+
+## Encoding and Decoding arena allocated types
+
+Rustc has a lot of [arena allocated types]. Deserializing these types isn't
+possible without access to the arena that they need to be allocated on. The
+[`TyDecoder`] and [`TyEncoder`] traits are supertraits of `Decoder` and
+`Encoder` that allow access to a `TyCtxt`.
+
+Types which contain arena allocated types can then bound the type parameter of
+their `Encodable` and `Decodable` implementations with these traits. For
+example
+
+```rust,ignore
+impl<'tcx, D: TyDecoder<'tcx>> Decodable<D> for MyStruct<'tcx> {
+    /* ... */
+}
+```
+
+The `TyEncodable` and `TyDecodable` [derive macros][derives] will expand to such
+an implementation.
+
+Decoding the actual arena allocated type is harder, because some of the
+implementations can't be written due to the orphan rules. To work around this,
+the [`RefDecodable`] trait is defined in `rustc_middle`. This can then be
+implemented for any type. The `TyDecodable` macro will call `RefDecodable` to
+decode references, but various generic code needs types to actually be
+`Decodable` with a specific decoder.
+
+For interned types instead of manually implementing `RefDecodable`, using a new
+type wrapper, like `ty::Predicate` and manually implementing `Encodable` and
+`Decodable` may be simpler.
+
+## Derive macros
+
+The `rustc_macros` crate defines various derives to help implement `Decodable`
+and `Encodable`.
+
+- The `Encodable` and `Decodable` macros generate implementations that apply to
+  all `Encoders` and `Decoders`. These should be used in crates that don't
+  depend on `rustc_middle`, or that have to be serialized by a type that does
+  not implement `TyEncoder`.
+- `MetadataEncodable` and `MetadataDecodable` generate implementations that
+  only allow decoding by [`rustc_metadata::rmeta::encoder::EncodeContext`] and
+  [`rustc_metadata::rmeta::decoder::DecodeContext`]. These are used for types
+  that contain `rustc_metadata::rmeta::Lazy`.
+- `TyEncodable` and `TyDecoder` generate implementation that apply to any
+  `TyEncoder` or `TyDecoder`. These should be used for types that are only
+  serialized in crate metadata and/or the incremental cache, which is most
+  serializable types in `rustc_middle`.
+
+## Shorthands
+
+`Ty` can be deeply recursive, if each `Ty` was encoded naively then crate
+metadata would be very large. To handle this, each `TyEncoder` has a cache of
+locations in its output where it has serialized types. If a type being encoded
+is in the cache, then instead of serializing the type as usual, the byte offset
+within the file being written is encoded instead. A similar scheme is used for
+`ty::Predicate`.
+
+## `Lazy<T>`
+
+Crate metadata is initially loaded before the `TyCtxt<'tcx>` is created, so
+some deserialization needs to be deferred from the initial loading of metadata.
+The [`Lazy<T>`] type wraps the (relative) offset in the crate metadata where a
+`T` has been serialized.
+
+The `Lazy<[T]>` and `Lazy<Table<I, T>>` type provide some functionality over
+`Lazy<Vec<T>>` and `Lazy<HashMap<I, T>>`:
+
+- It's possible to encode a `Lazy<[T]>` directly from an iterator, without
+  first collecting into a `Vec<T>`.
+- Indexing into a `Lazy<Table<I, T>>` does not require decoding entries other
+  than the one being read.
+
+**note**: `Lazy<T>` does not cache its value after being deserialized the first
+time. Instead the query system is the main way of caching these results.
+
+## Specialization
+
+A few types, most notably `DefId`, need to have different implementations for
+different `Encoder`s. This is currently handled by ad-hoc specializations:
+`DefId` has a `default` implementation of `Encodable<E>` and a specialized one
+for `Encodable<CacheEncoder>`.
+
+[arena allocated types]: memory.md
+[AST]: the-parser.md
+[derives]: #derive-macros
+[persist incremental compilation results]: queries/incremental-compilation-in-detail.md#the-real-world-how-persistence-makes-everything-complicated
+[serialize]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serialization
+
+[`CrateInfo`]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/nightly-rustc/rustc_codegen_ssa/struct.CrateInfo.html
+[`Lazy<T>`]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/nightly-rustc/rustc_metadata/rmeta/struct.Lazy.html
+[`RefDecodable`]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/nightly-rustc/rustc_middle/ty/codec/trait.RefDecodable.html
+[`rustc_metadata::rmeta::decoder::DecodeContext`]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/nightly-rustc/rustc_metadata/rmeta/decoder/struct.DecodeContext.html
+[`rustc_metadata::rmeta::encoder::EncodeContext`]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/nightly-rustc/rustc_metadata/rmeta/encoder/struct.EncodeContext.html
+[`rustc_serialize`]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/nightly-rustc/rustc_serialize/index.html
+[`TyDecoder`]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/nightly-rustc/rustc_middle/ty/codec/trait.TyEncoder.html
+[`TyEncoder`]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/nightly-rustc/rustc_middle/ty/codec/trait.TyDecoder.html