[−][src]Crate abi_stable
For Rust-to-Rust ffi, with a focus on creating libraries loaded at program startup, and with load-time type-checking.
This library allows defining Rust libraries that can be loaded at runtime, even if they were built with a different Rust version than the crate that depends on it.
These are some usecases for this library:
-
Converting a Rust dependency tree from compiling statically into a single binary, into one binary (and potentially) many dynamic libraries, allowing separate re-compilation on changes.
-
Creating a plugin system (without support for unloading).
Features
Currently this library has these features:
-
ffi-safe equivalent of trait objects for any combination of a selection of traits.
-
Provides ffi-safe alternatives to many standard library types..
-
Provides the
StableAbi
trait for asserting that types are ffi-safe. -
Checking at load-time that the types in the dynamic library have the expected layout, allowing for semver compatible changes while checking the layout of types.
-
Provides the
StableAbi
derive macro to both assert that the type is ffi compatible, and to get the layout of the type at runtime to check that it is still compatible.
Examples
For examples of using abi_stable
you can look at the crates in the examples directory ,
in the repository for this crate.
To run the examples generally you'll have to build the *_impl
crate,
then run the *_user
crate (all *_user
crates should have a help message and a readme.md).
Glossary
interface crate
:the crate that declares the public functions and types that
are necessary to load the library at runtime.
ìmplementation crate
:A crate that implements all the functions in the interface crate.
user crate
:A crate that depends on an interface crate
and
loads 1 or more ìmplementation crate
s for it.
module
:refers to a struct of function pointers and other static values,
and implement the ModuleTrait trait.
These are declared in the interface crate
,exported in the implementation crate
,
and loaded in the user crate
.
Rust-to-Rust FFI guidelines.
Types must implement StableAbi to be safely passed through the FFI boundary, which can be done using the StableAbi derive macro.
These are the 2 kinds of types passed through FFI:
-
Value kind: The layout of types passed by value must not change in a minor version. This is the default kind when deriving StableAbi.
-
Opaque kind: Types wrapped in
VirtualWrapper<SomePointer<ZeroSized<Interface>>>
, whose layout can change in any version of the library, and can only be unwrapped back to the original type in the dynamic library/binary that created it.
Declaring enums
Adding variants or fields to a variant is disallowed in minor versions.
To represent non-exhaustive enums without fields it is recommended using structs and associated constants so that it is not UB to keep adding field-less variants in minor versions.
Extra documentation
- Unsafe code guidelines:
Describes how to write unsafe code ,relating to this library.
Macros
-
StableAbi derive macro:
For asserting abi-stability of a type, and obtaining the layout of the time at runtime. -
Prefix-types (using the StableAbi derive macro):
The method by which vtables and modules are implemented, allowing extending them in minor versions of a library.
Re-exports
pub use abi_stable_derive::StableAbi; |
pub use abi_stable_derive::export_sabi_module; |
pub use abi_stable_derive::impl_InterfaceType; |
Modules
abi_stability | types and traits related to abi stability. |
docs | Documentation for macros,and guides. |
erased_types | Types and traits related to type erasure. |
ignored_wrapper | Wrapper type(s) where their value is ignored in some trait impls . |
lazy_static_ref | A late-initialized static reference. |
library | Traits and types related to loading an abi_stable dynamic library, as well as functions/modules within. |
marker_type | Zero-sized types . |
pointer_trait | Traits for pointers. |
prefix_type | Types,traits,and functions used by prefix-types. |
reexports | Miscelaneous items re-exported from core_extensions. |
std_types | Contains many ffi-safe equivalents of standard library types. The vast majority of them can be converted to and from std equivalents. |
traits | Where miscellaneous traits reside. |
type_level | Types used to represent values at compile-time,eg:True/False. |
utils | Utility functions. |
version | Types representing the version number of a library. |
Macros
extern_fn_panic_handling | Use this to make sure that you handle panics inside |
impl_get_type_info | Implements the abi_stable::type_info::GetTypeInfo trait for some type. |
package_version_strings | Instantiates a |
rtry | Equivalent to |
rtry_opt | Equivalent to |
tl_genparams | Use this when constructing a |
Structs
VirtualWrapper | VirtualWrapper implements ffi-safe trait objects,for a selection of traits. |
ZeroSized | A Zero-sized type used by |
Traits
ImplType | An |
InterfaceType | Defines the usable/required traits when creating a
|
StableAbi | Represents a type whose layout is stable. |
Type Definitions
ErasedObject | Used by vtables/pointers to signal that the type has been erased. |