Struct rustc_hir::definitions::DefPathHash

pub struct DefPathHash(pub Fingerprint);

A DefPathHash is a fixed-size representation of a DefPath that is stable across crate and compilation session boundaries. It consists of two separate 64-bit hashes. The first uniquely identifies the crate this DefPathHash originates from (see StableCrateId), and the second uniquely identifies the corresponding DefPath within that crate. Together they form a unique identifier within an entire crate graph.

There is a very small chance of hash collisions, which would mean that two different DefPaths map to the same DefPathHash. Proceeding compilation with such a hash collision would very probably lead to an ICE, and in the worst case lead to a silent mis-compilation. The compiler therefore actively and exhaustively checks for such hash collisions and aborts compilation if it finds one.

DefPathHash uses 64-bit hashes for both the crate-id part and the crate-internal part, even though it is likely that there are many more LocalDefIds in a single crate than there are individual crates in a crate graph. Since we use the same number of bits in both cases, the collision probability for the crate-local part will be quite a bit higher (though still very small).

This imbalance is not by accident: A hash collision in the crate-local part of a DefPathHash will be detected and reported while compiling the crate in question. Such a collision does not depend on outside factors and can be easily fixed by the crate maintainer (e.g. by renaming the item in question or by bumping the crate version in a harmless way).

A collision between crate-id hashes on the other hand is harder to fix because it depends on the set of crates in the entire crate graph of a compilation session. Again, using the same crate with a different version number would fix the issue with a high probability – but that might be easier said then done if the crates in questions are dependencies of third-party crates.

That being said, given a high quality hash function, the collision probabilities in question are very small. For example, for a big crate like rustc_middle (with ~50000 LocalDefIds as of the time of writing) there is a probability of roughly 1 in 14,750,000,000 of a crate-internal collision occurring. For a big crate graph with 1000 crates in it, there is a probability of 1 in 36,890,000,000,000 of a StableCrateId collision.

Tuple Fields

0: Fingerprint

Layout

Note: Most layout information is completely unstable and may even differ between compilations. The only exception is types with certain repr(...) attributes. Please see the Rust Reference’s “Type Layout” chapter for details on type layout guarantees.

Size: 16 bytes