X-Git-Url: https://git.ralfj.de/web.git/blobdiff_plain/bc620a95ca16dbe33d32a462eb8cc06414c0ba3d..HEAD:/ralf/_posts/2022-09-26-cargo-careful.md diff --git a/ralf/_posts/2022-09-26-cargo-careful.md b/ralf/_posts/2022-09-26-cargo-careful.md deleted file mode 100644 index 234b8d4..0000000 --- a/ralf/_posts/2022-09-26-cargo-careful.md +++ /dev/null @@ -1,27 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: "cargo careful: run your Rust code with extra careful debug checking" -categories: rust -reddit: /rust/comments/xogayv/cargo_careful_run_your_rust_code_with_extra/ ---- - -Did you know that the standard library is full of useful checks that users never get to see? -There are plenty of debug assertions in the standard library that will do things like check that `char::from_u32_unchecked` is called on a valid `char`, that `CStr::from_bytes_with_nul_unchecked` does not have internal nul bytes, or that pointer functions such as `read`, `copy`, or `copy_nonoverlapping` are called on suitably aligned non-null (and non-overlapping) pointers. -However, the regular standard library that is distributed by rustup is compiled without debug assertions, so there is no easy way for users to benefit from all this extra checking. - - - -[`cargo careful`](https://github.com/RalfJung/cargo-careful) is here to close this gap: -when invoked the first time, it builds a standard library with debug assertions from source, and then runs your program or test suite with that standard library. -Installing `cargo careful` is as easy as `cargo install cargo-careful`, and then you can do `cargo +nightly careful run`/`cargo +nightly careful test` to execute your binary crates and test suites with an extra amount of debug checking. - -This will naturally be slower than a regular debug or release build, but it is *much* faster than executing your program in [Miri](https://github.com/rust-lang/miri) and still helps find some Undefined Behavior. -Unlike Miri, it is fully FFI-compatible (though the code behind the FFI barrier is completely unchecked). -Of course Miri is much more thorough and `cargo careful` will miss many problems (for instance, it cannot detect out-of-bounds pointer arithmetic -- but it *does* perform bounds checking on `get_unchecked` slice accesses). - -Note that for now, some of these checks (in particular for raw pointer methods) cause an abrupt abort of the program via SIGILL without a nice error message or backtrace. -There are probably ways to improve this in the future. -Meanwhile, if you have some `unsafe` code that for one reason or another you cannot test with Miri, give [`cargo careful`] a try and let me know how it is doing. :) - -[`cargo careful`]: https://github.com/RalfJung/cargo-careful - -*By the way, I am soon [starting as a professor at ETH Zürich]({% post_url 2022-08-16-eth %}), so if you are interested in working with me on programming language theory as a master student, PhD student, or post-doc, then please [reach out](https://research.ralfj.de/contact.html)!*