evaluation.md

🔬 Evaluation

The evaluation surveys the various design approaches that are under consideration. It is not required for all initiatives, only those that begin with a problem statement but without a clear picture of the best solution. Often the evaluation will refer to topics in the design-discussions for more detailed consideration.

Goals

Write async fn in traits, impls

The goal of the impact is to enable users to write async fn in traits and impls in a natural way. As a simple example, we would like to support the ability to write an async fn in any trait:

trait Connection {
    async fn open(&mut self);
    async fn send(&mut self);
    async fn close(&mut self);
}

Along with the corresponding impl:

impl Connection for MyConnection {
    async fn open(&mut self) {
        ...
    }

    async fn send(&mut self) {
        ...
    }

    async fn close(&mut self) {
        ...
    }
}

The goal in general is that async fn can be used in traits as widely as possible:

• for foundational traits, like reading, writing, and iteration;
• for async closures;
• for async drop, which is built in to the language;
• in dyn values, which introduce some particular complications;
• in libraries, for all the usual reasons one uses traits;
• in ordinary programs, using all manner of executors.

Support async drop

One particular trait worth discussing is the Drop trait. We would like to support "async drop", which means the ability to await things during drop:

trait AsyncDrop {
    async fn drop(&mut self);
}

Like Drop, the AsyncDrop trait would be