I think that’s a fantastic compromise. I am 100% in agreement with you on this topic, FWIW.
The unsafe in `unsafe mod ffi { ... }` is literally the proof that all APIs exposed in the block are sound to call from safe Rust.
It would only need to go hand in hand with a comment explaining why each API in the block is sound to call safely, and it allows users to not list unsound APIs in there, but wrap them manually when needed. Along with code that checks the C++ lib version, etc. to make sure that the proof are kept in sync with each version of the lib.
That's completely different from not requiring any unsafe in the Rust side, and doing this en masse via bindgen.
How is it not a compromise? Party A wanted (and implemented) something that didn't require `unsafe`. Party B wanted `unsafe` to be used. After much discussion, Party A concedes with allowing people to put `unsafe` in some of the code, and Party B concedes that putting it there is sufficient instead of requiring it to be strewn all over the place.
Sounds like a (reasonable) compromise to me.
If you don't want to have unsafe everywhere it seems to me that the reasonable path (taken by many Rust libraries) is simply to wrap the raw C/C++ interface around a Rust interface that enforces the safety invariants. That's why you can write safe GTK or OpenGL code in Rust, using Rust libraries that expose an actually sound interface.
I mean, FFI code is tagged as unsafe because it is unsafe to call. I don't see how "but I don't like having to write unsafe everywhere in my FFI code :(" is in any way a reasonable technical argument here.
I intentionally avoided taking a side in this debate. My response was focused on the claim that there was no compromise between the parties, when I think it's pretty clear cut that there is a compromise.
Personally, I'm sympathetic to both parties. In my own personal FFI-binding library I chose to let the programmer decide per-method whether it's safe or unsafe.
Party A wanting safe Rust to have undefined behavior was wrong. Party A now adds unsafe to their API, so that undefined behavior only happens in unsafe Rust.
I don't see the compromise anywhere. Party B told party A that they were wrong, and party A acknowledge it and fixed their crate.
cxx generates code that uses `unsafe` blocks/functions. It then generates safe wrappers around those, which are what it exposes to users. It's no different then someone doing this:
pub fn safe_fn() {
extern { fn unsafe_fn(); }
unsafe { unsafe_fn(); }
}
Statements like "Party A wanting safe Rust to have undefined behavior was wrong" are just straight up incorrect.
cxx is currently unsound, and the author (dtolnay) has chimed in above with a fix they are considering that fixes it (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24244121)
The API of the cxx crate is safe, and it can cause UB, therefore it is unsound.
It doesn't matter that the cxx crate API is a macro. Yes, this macro expands to unsafe code like you mention, but the problem is that this unsafe code is often "broken" (unsound).
The Rust spec defines "unsound" as "introducing undefined behavior in safe Rust". The API of the cxx crate allows a safe Rust program to have undefined behavior, and it is therefore unsound.
I think there might be a misunderstanding here. I interpreted the `unsafe mod ffi { ... }` to be like `unsafe fn foo()`, declaring the module as unsafe, not an unsafe block where we're telling the compiler we will maintain the invariants ourselves.
It is somewhat unfortunate both the proof obligation and proof 'declaration' use the same token.
There have been some RFCs open to improve this situation (e.g. unsafe blocks in unsafe functions comes to mind).