contiguous_mem

contiguous_mem streamlines storage and management of data stored in contiguous memory block.

Key Features

no_std support!
Simple and straightforward interface similar to standard containers.
Support for dynamic resizing of allocated memory keeping the created references functional (for safe implementations).

Specialized implementations

You can pick and choose which implementation suits your use case best allowing you to avoid runtime cost of synchronization and additionally memory cost of safely wrapping referenced data if you don't need it.

Default implementation keeps relative offsets of stored data which are resolved on access.

Tradeoffs

Works without nightly but leaks data, enable ptr_metadata or disable default leak_data feature flag if memory leaks are an issue:
- ptr_metadata requires nightly,
- disabling leak_data imposes Copy requirement on stored types.
References returned by store function follow the same borrow restrictions as the language, Deref is implemented for ContiguousMemoryRef but it will panic on dereference if it's been already mutably borrowed somewhere else. Use ContiguousMemoryRef::try_get if you'd like to handle that properly.

Getting Started

Add the crate to your dependencies:

[dependencies]
contiguous_mem = { version = "0.3.0" }

Optionally disable the std feature and enable no_std feature to use in no_std environment:

[dependencies]
contiguous_mem = { version = "0.3.0", default-features = false, features = ["no_std"] }

Features

std (default) - use std environment sync primitives and locks
no_std - enables no_std dependencies
leak_data (default) - disables Copy requirement for stored types, but any references in stored data will be leaked when the memory container is dropped
debug - enables derive(Debug) on structures unrelated to error handling
ptr_metadata <nightly> - enables support for casting returned references into dyn Trait types as well as cleaning up any types that implement Drop or generate drop glue
error_in_core <nightly> - enables support for core::error::Error in no_std environment

Usage

use contiguous_mem::prelude::*;

#[derive(Debug, Clone, Copy, PartialEq, Eq)]
struct Data {
    value: u32,
}

fn main() {
    // Create a ContiguousMemory instance with a capacity of 1024 bytes and 1-byte alignment
    let mut memory = ContiguousMemory::new(1024);

    // Store data in the memory container
    let data = Data { value: 42 };
    let stored_number: ContiguousMemoryRef<u64> = memory.store(22u64);
    let stored_data: ContiguousMemoryRef<Data> = memory.store(data);

    // Retrieve and use the stored data
    assert_eq!(*stored_data.get(), data);
    assert_eq!(*stored_number.get(), 22);
}

Note that reference types returned by store are inferred and only shown here for demonstration purposes.

Contributions

Contributions are welcome, feel free to create an issue or a pull request.

All contributions to the project are licensed under the Zlib/MIT/Apache 2.0 license unless you explicitly state otherwise.

License

This project is licensed under Zlib, MIT, or Apache-2.0 license, choose whichever suits you most.

contiguous-mem 0.3.0