make runtime library loading safer

[steveklabnik]

Issue by cmr
Thursday Jun 19, 2014 at 17:17 GMT

For earlier discussion, see rust-lang/rust#15040

This issue was labelled with: A-an-interesting-project, A-libs, E-hard, I-enhancement in the Rust repository

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We currently have an interface for runtime library loading, using the dynamic linker, but it has the problem that it interacts poorly with name mangling and is entirely unsafe. Figure out how to make it type-safe, and preferably memory-safe too.

[flaub]

How can runtime library loading (AKA late-binding) work with coherency? It seems to imply that the coherency checker would need to execute at runtime.

[Kimundi]

It would likely be restricted to non-generic API known to the crate that does the loading - so at most trait objects and concrete types, but afaik nothing that coherency would be relevant for.

[norcalli]

https://github.com/nagisa/rust_libloading Does this solve the problem?

[Kimundi]

It improves on the old library, but most of the real issues are in missing language features, so no.