// Copyright 2019-2021 Parity Technologies (UK) Ltd.
//
// Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
// you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
// You may obtain a copy of the License at
//
// http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
//
// Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
// distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
// WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
// See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
// limitations under the License.
//! Provides form definitions.
//!
//! The forms provided here are used to generically communicate the mode a type
//! identifier, type definition or structure is using.
//!
//! The default form is the `MetaForm`.
//! It uses `MetaType` for communicating type identifiers and thus acts as
//! a bridge from runtime to compile time type information.
//!
//! The `PortableForm` is a space-efficient representation
//! that no longer has any connections to the interning registry and thus
//! can no longer be used to retrieve information from the
//! original registry. Its sole purpose is for space-efficient serialization.
//!
//! Other forms, such as a portable form that is still bound to the registry
//! (also via lifetime tracking) are possible but current not needed.
use crate;
use crate::;
use Serialize;
/// Trait to control the internal structures of type definitions.
///
/// This allows for type-level separation between free forms that can be
/// instantiated out of the flux and portable forms that require some sort of
/// interning data structures.
/// Trait for types which can be used to represent strings in type definitions.
/// A meta meta-type.
///
/// Allows to be converted into other forms such as portable form
/// through the registry and `IntoPortable`.
/// Portable form that has its lifetime untracked in association to its interner.
///
/// # Note
///
/// This resolves some lifetime issues with self-referential structs (such as
/// the registry itself) but can no longer be used to resolve to the original
/// underlying data.
///
/// `type String` is owned in order to enable decoding
;