[NativeAOT] don't generate __GetFieldHelper if struct is never boxed?

[NinoFloris]

I'm unsure how feasible this is but it would be helpful if the helper isn't emitted if the struct is never boxed (and never gets a constrained call on Equals/GetHashCode either).

I understand the difficulty of tracking whether a struct is 'boxed', as generics (and (T)(object)value casts etc) significantly complicate the analysis. Though with struct types forcing specialization it should not be impossible to get some certainty?

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[MichalStrehovsky]

Do you have an example where the struct is not boxed but we still generate the helper? We do not generate the helper unless the compiler thinks it could be boxed.

For example:

using System.Runtime.CompilerServices;

Consume(default, new Bar[1]);

[MethodImpl(MethodImplOptions.NoInlining)]
static void Consume(Foo f, Bar[] b) { }

struct Foo { double d; }

struct Bar { double d; }

Sizoscope reports:

Notice Foo is gone.

Bar is there even though not boxed, but there are easy ways to get it as boxed. For example: call Array.GetValue. Or cast to non-generic IEnumerable and enumerate. Etc. The compiler doesn't track what exact object instance the interface methods get called on and these foundational interfaces are pretty much guaranteed to get called somewhere.

[NinoFloris]

This is the repro, not great.

var action = (Struct _) => { };
struct Struct;

[MichalStrehovsky]

This is the repro, not great.

This is from two things:

1. The Invoke method on all delegates is implicitly considered reflected on. We had to do this because there's lots of code in this repo and other repos that needs to know the delegate Invoke method signature. Because of LINQ expressions we need to consider it not just target of reflection introspection, but also invocation: Generate method bodies for delegate Invoke methods #70883: that PR is the reason why this is so expensive.
2. Types in signatures of reflected-on methods trigger logic that considers the types implicitly boxed. I did some work around that in Try rooting less stuff for reflectable method signatures #92994. Looks like I already looked if we could get rid of this for valuetypes and it is known it would be a saving if we could ("I'm already a bit uncomfortable with this change that limits it to reference types only, but it does save 0.1% on ASP.NET scenarios. We'd get triple that if we could also do this for value types, but it doesn't look likely we can."). I don't remember the details anymore, just that I looked at it and it didn't look straightforward.

Making it so that 1 or 2 doesn't apply would fix this. I don't know if it's really possible. We had reasons for both behaviors.

[MichalStrehovsky]

Making it so that 1 or 2 doesn't apply would fix this. I don't know if it's really possible. We had reasons for both behaviors.

Broke the pattern by addressing 2 in #111610.

The TodosApi is an app that use Npgsql.

Size statistics

Pull request #111610

Project	Size before	Size after	Difference
TodosApi-windows	23398400	23340032	-58368
avalonia.app-windows	19270144	19204096	-66048
hello-minimal-windows	855040	855040	0
hello-windows	1100288	1100288	0
kestrel-minimal-windows	4902400	4861952	-40448
reflection-windows	1745920	1744896	-1024
webapiaot-windows	9244160	9201152	-43008
winrt-component-full-windows	5725696	5726208	512
winrt-component-minimal-windows	1757696	1756672	-1024