opaque-pointer-rs

Generic functions to work with opaque pointers when use FFI to expose Rust structs

Basic usage

With this crate you can manage raw pointers easily to expose structs that will be use as opaque pointers from C or C++ calling to Rust functions to use it. This can be used with cbindgen crate with option parse.parse_deps = true for it will generate opaque C/C++ structs to use pointers in the arguments.

You can find more information about using Rust from other languages in The Rust FFI Omnibus objects section of Jake Goulding.

Examples

Creating FFIs to use a Rust's struct methods from C or C++:

struct TestIt { value: u8 }

impl TestIt {
    pub fn add(&mut self, value: u8) { self.value += value }
    pub fn get(&self) -> u8 { self.value }
}

/// Ownership will NOT control the heap-allocated memory until own it back.
#[no_mangle]
pub extern fn test_it_new(value: u8) -> *mut TestIt {
    return opaque_pointer::raw(TestIt { value });
}

/// Drop (free memory of) Rust's TestIt object as usually.
#[no_mangle]
pub extern fn test_it_free(test_it: *mut TestIt) {
    let test_it = unsafe { opaque_pointer::own_back(test_it) };
    // You can use it or only let it be dropped.
}

#[no_mangle]
pub extern fn test_it_add(test_it: *mut TestIt, value: u8) {
    let test_it = unsafe { opaque_pointer::mut_object(test_it) };
    test_it.add(value);
    // Here will NOT be dropped, the pointer continues been valid.
}

#[no_mangle]
pub extern fn test_it_get(test_it: *const TestIt) -> u8 {
    let test_it = unsafe { opaque_pointer::object(test_it) };
    return test_it.get();
    // Here will NOT be dropped, the pointer continues been valid.
}

The previous example is compiled when tests are run. If you have an error with that code, please, open a issue.

Features

• std: activated by default, it is required for c-types FFI.
• alloc: required if compile without std.
• c-types: FFI for C types, requires std feature.
• panic-if-null: it will check if a pointer is null to panic before to use it.

Panic & unwind in FFI functions

See comment in Rust issue #58794 and Rust issue #58760:

The default was changed to abort-by-default in extern functions in this PR. This is tracking the stabilization of the #[unwind(allowed)] (and #[unwind(abort)]) attributes.

Also Rust pull request #55982:

This PR changes the behavior of generated code to be sound-by-default. If an extern fn is unwound (panicked through) then it immediately aborts the program. Put another way, no extern fn can unwind.

And Rust issue #52652:

This UB is not mentioned in any later release notes.