This is an attempt to balance three problems, each of which would
be violated by a simpler implementation:
- A type alias should show all the `impl` blocks for the target
type, and vice versa, if they're applicable. If nothing was
done, and rustdoc continues to match them up in HIR, this
would not work.
- Copying the target type's docs into its aliases' HTML pages
directly causes far too much redundant HTML text to be generated
when a crate has large numbers of methods and large numbers
of type aliases.
- Using JavaScript exclusively for type alias impl docs would
be a functional regression, and could make some docs very hard
to find for non-JS readers.
- Making sure that only applicable docs are show in the
resulting page requires a type checkers. Do not reimplement
the type checker in JavaScript.
So, to make it work, rustdoc stashes these type-alias-inlined docs
in a JSONP "database-lite". The file is generated in `write_shared.rs`,
included in a `<script>` tag added in `print_item.rs`, and `main.js`
takes care of patching the additional docs into the DOM.
The format of `trait.impl` and `type.impl` JS files are superficially
similar. Each line, except the JSONP wrapper itself, belongs to a crate,
and they are otherwise separate (rustdoc should be idempotent). The
"meat" of the file is HTML strings, so the frontend code is very simple.
Links are relative to the doc root, though, so the frontend needs to fix
that up, and inlined docs can reuse these files.
However, there are a few differences, caused by the sophisticated
features that type aliases have. Consider this crate graph:
```text
---------------------------------
| crate A: struct Foo<T> |
| type Bar = Foo<i32> |
| impl X for Foo<i8> |
| impl Y for Foo<i32> |
---------------------------------
|
----------------------------------
| crate B: type Baz = A::Foo<i8> |
| type Xyy = A::Foo<i8> |
| impl Z for Xyy |
----------------------------------
```
The type.impl/A/struct.Foo.js JS file has a structure kinda like this:
```js
JSONP({
"A": [["impl Y for Foo<i32>", "Y", "A::Bar"]],
"B": [["impl X for Foo<i8>", "X", "B::Baz", "B::Xyy"], ["impl Z for Xyy", "Z", "B::Baz"]],
});
```
When the type.impl file is loaded, only the current crate's docs are
actually used. The main reason to bundle them together is that there's
enough duplication in them for DEFLATE to remove the redundancy.
The contents of a crate are a list of impl blocks, themselves
represented as lists. The first item in the sublist is the HTML block,
the second item is the name of the trait (which goes in the sidebar),
and all others are the names of type aliases that successfully match.
This way:
- There's no need to generate these files for types that have no aliases
in the current crate. If a dependent crate makes a type alias, it'll
take care of generating its own docs.
- There's no need to reimplement parts of the type checker in
JavaScript. The Rust backend does the checking, and includes its
results in the file.
- Docs defined directly on the type alias are dropped directly in the
HTML by `render_assoc_items`, and are accessible without JavaScript.
The JSONP file will not list impl items that are known to be part
of the main HTML file already.
[JSONP]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSONP
Alona Enraght-Moony