const safety and promotion

Author: RalfJung

README.md

@@ -18,6 +18,11 @@ The Rust compiler runs the [MIR](https://rust-lang-nursery.github.io/rustc-guide
 in the [`MIR` interpreter (miri)](https://rust-lang-nursery.github.io/rustc-guide/const-eval.html),
 which sort of is a virtual machine using `MIR` as "bytecode".
 
+## Table of Contents
+
+* [Const Safety](const_safety.md)
+* [Promotion](const_safety.md)
+
 ## Related RFCs
 
 ### Const Promotion
@@ -62,4 +67,4 @@ even if it does not break the compilation of the current crate's dependencies.
 Some of these features interact. E.g.
 
 * `match` + `loop` yields `while`
-* `panic!` + `if` + `locals` yields `assert!`
+* `panic!` + `if` + `locals` yields `assert!`

const_safety.md

@@ -1 +1,134 @@
-# Const safety
+# Const safety
+
+The miri engine, which is used to execute code at compile time, can fail in
+four possible ways:
+
+* The program performs an unsupported operation (e.g., calling an unimplemented
+  intrinsics, or doing an operation that would observe the integer address of a
+  pointer).
+* The program causes undefined behavior (e.g., dereferencing an out-of-bounds
+  pointer).
+* The program panics (e.g., a failed bounds check).
+* The program loops forever, and this is detected by the loop detector.
+
+Just like panics and non-termination are acceptable in safe run-time Rust code,
+we also consider these acceptable in safe compile-time Rust code.  However, we
+would like to rule out the first two kinds of failures in safe code.  Following
+the terminology in [this blog post], we call a program that does not fail in the
+first two ways *const safe*.
+
+[this blog post]: https://www.ralfj.de/blog/2018/07/19/const.html
+
+The goal of the const safety check, then, is to ensure that a program is const
+safe.  What makes this tricky is that there are some operations that are safe as
+far as run-time Rust is concerned, but unsupported in the miri engine and hence
+not const safe (they fall in the first category of failures above).  We call these operations *unconst*.  The purpose
+of the following section is to explain this in more detail, before proceeding
+with the main definitions.
+
+## Miri background
+
+A very simple example of an unconst operation is
+```rust
+static S:i32 = 0;
+const BAD:bool = (&S as *const i32 as usize) % 16 == 0;
+```
+The modulo operation here is not supported by the miri engine because evaluating
+it requires knowing the actual integer address of `S`.
+
+The way miri handles this is by treating pointer and integer values separately.
+The most primitive kind of value in miri is a `Scalar`, and a scalar is *either*
+a pointer (`Scalar::Ptr`) or a bunch of bits representing an integer
+(`Scalar::Bits`).  Every value of a variable of primitive type is stored as a
+`Scalar`.  In the code above, casting the pointer `&S` to `*const i32` and then
+to `usize` does not actually change the value -- we end up with a local variable
+of type `usize` whose value is a `Scalar::Ptr`.  This is not a problem in
+itself, but then executing `%` on this *pointer value* is unsupported.
+
+However, it does not seem appropriate to blame the `%` operation above for this
+failure. `%` on "normal" `usize` values (`Scalar::Bits`) is perfectly fine, just using it on
+values computed from pointers is an issue.  Essentially, `&i32 as *const i32 as
+usize` is a "safe" `usize` at run-time (meaning that applying safe operations to
+this `usize` cannot lead to misbehavior, following terminology [suggested here])
+-- but the same value is *not* "safe" at compile-time, because we can cause a
+const safety violation by applying a safe operation (namely, `%`).
+
+[suggested here]: https://www.ralfj.de/blog/2018/08/22/two-kinds-of-invariants.html
+
+## Const safety check on values
+
+The result of any const computation (`const`, `static`, promoteds) is subject to
+a "sanity check" which enforces const safety.  (A sanity check is already
+happening, but it is not exactly checking const safety currently.)  Const safety
+is defined as follows:
+
+* Integer and floating point types are const-safe if they are a `Scalar::Bits`.
+  This makes sure that we can run `%` and other operations without violating
+  const safety.  In particular, the value must *not* be uninitialized.
+* References are const-safe if they are `Scalar::Ptr` into allocated memory, and
+  the data stored there is const-safe.  (Technically, we would also like to
+  require `&mut` to be unique and `&` to not be mutable unless there is an
+  `UnsafeCell`, but it seems infeasible to check that.)  For fat pointers, the
+  length of a slice must be a valid `usize` and the vtable of a `dyn Trait` must
+  be a valid vtable.
+* `bool` is const-safe if it is `Scalar::Bits` with a value of `0` or `1`.
+* `char` is const-safe if it is a valid unicode codepoint.
+* `()` is always const-safe.
+* `!` is never const-safe.
+* Tuples, structs, arrays and slices are const-safe if all their fields are
+  const-safe.
+* Enums are const-safe if they have a valid discriminant and the fields of the
+  active variant are const-safe.
+* Unions are always const-safe; the data does not matter.
+* `dyn Trait` is const-safe if the value is const-safe at the type indicated by
+  the vtable.
+* Function pointers are const-safe if they point to an actual function.  A
+  `const fn` pointer (when/if we have those) must point to a `const fn`.
+
+For example:
+```rust
+static S: i32 = 0;
+const BAD: usize = &S as *const i32 as usize;
+```
+Here, `S` is const-safe because `0` is a `Scalar::Bits`.  However, `BAD` is *not* const-safe because it is a `Scalar::Ptr`.
+
+## Const safety check on code
+
+The purpose of the const safety check on code is to prohibit construction of
+non-const-safe values in safe code.  We can allow *almost* all safe operations,
+except for unconst operations -- which are all related to raw pointers:
+Comparing raw pointers for (in)equality, converting them to integers, hashing
+them (including hashing references) and so on must be prohibited.  Basically, we
+should not permit any raw pointer operations to begin with, and carefully
+evaluate any that we permit to make sure they are fully supported by miri and do
+not permit constructing non-const-safe values.
+
+There should also be a mechanism akin to `unsafe` blocks to opt-in to using
+unconst operations.  At this point, it becomes the responsibility of the
+programmer to preserve const safety.  In particular, a *safe* `const fn` must
+always execute const-safely when called with const-safe arguments, and produce a
+const-safe result.  For example, the following function is const-safe (after
+some extensions of the miri engine that are already implemented in miri) even
+though it uses raw pointer operations:
+```rust
+const fn test_eq<T>(x: &T, y: &T) -> bool {
+    x as *const _ == y as *const _
+}
+```
+On the other hand, the following function is *not* const-safe and hence it is considered a bug to mark it as such:
+```
+const fn convert<T>(x: &T) -> usize {
+  x as *const _ as usize
+}
+```
+
+## Open questions
+
+* Do we allow unconst operations in `unsafe` blocks, or do we have some other
+  mechanism for opting in to them (like `unconst` blocks)?
+
+* How do we communicate that the rules for safe `const fn` using unsafe code are
+  different than the ones for "runtime" functions?  The good news here is that
+  violating the rules, at worst, leads to a compile-time error in a dependency.
+  No UB can arise.  However, thanks to [promotion](promotion.md), compile-time
+  errors can arise even if no `const` or `static` is involved.

promotion.md

@@ -1,20 +1,52 @@
 # Const promotion
 
+Note that promotion happens on the MIR, not on surface-level syntax.  This is
+relevant when discussing e.g. handling of panics caused by overflowing
+arithmetic.
+
 ## Rules
 
 ### 1. No side effects
 
-Promotion is not allowed to throw away side effects.
-This includes panicking. So in order to promote `&(0_usize - 1)`,
-the subtraction is thrown away and only the panic is kept.
+Promotion is not allowed to throw away side effects.  This includes
+panicking. let us look at what happens when we promote `&(0_usize - 1)`:
+In the MIR, this looks roughly like
+```
+_tmp1 = CheckedSub (const 0usize) (const 1usize)
+assert(!_tmp1.1) -> [success: bb2; unwind: ..]
+
+bb2:
+_tmp2 = tmp1.0
+_res = &_tmp2
+```
+Both `_tmp1` and `_tmp2` are promoted to statics.  `_tmp1` evaluates to `(~0,
+true)`, so the assertion will always fail at run-time.  Computing `_tmp2` fails
+with a panic, which is thrown away -- so we have no result.  In principle, we
+could generate any code for this because we know the code is unreachable (the
+assertion is going to fail).  Just to be safe, we generate a call to
+`llvm.trap`.
 
 ### 2. Const safety
 
-Only const safe code gets promoted. This means that promotion doesn't happen
-if the code does some action which, when run at compile time, either errors or
-produces a value that differs from runtime.
+Only const safe code gets promoted. The exact details for `const safety` are
+discussed in [here](const_safety.md).
+
+An example of this would be `&(&1 as *const i32 as usize % 16 == 0)`. The actual
+location is not known at compile-time, so we cannot promote this.  Generally, we
+can guarantee const-safety by not promoting when an unsafe or unconst operation
+is performed.  However, things get more tricky when `const` and `const fn` are
+involved.
 
-An example of this would be `&1 as *const i32 as usize == 42`. While it is highly
-unlikely that the address of temporary value is `42`, at runtime this could be true.
+For `const`, based on the const safety check described [here](const_safety.md),
+we can rely on there not being const-unsafe values in the `const`, so we should
+be able to promote freely.
 
-The exact details for `const safety` are discussed in [here](const_safety.md).
+For `const fn`, there is no way to check anything in advance.  We can either
+just not promote, or we can move responsibility to the `const fn` and promote
+*if* all function arguments pass the const safety check.  So, `foo(42usize)`
+would get promoted, but `foo(&1 as *const i32 as usize)` would not.  When this
+call panics, compilation proceeds and we just hard-code a panic to happen as
+well at run-time.  However, when const evaluation fails with another error, we
+have no choice but to abort compilation of a program that would have compiled
+fine if we would not have decided to promote.  It is the responsibility of `foo`
+to not fail this way when working with const-safe arguments.