Should we use MaybeUnint?

[Kixunil]

At first I thought MaybeUninit isn't used out of paranoia but now I realized it was because of MSRV. We can use it now. There's a bunch of places where it should be usable - mainly out parameters in C functions.

Pros/cons/thoughts:

• Faster, even without cross-language LTO
• Probably less burden on optimizer
• Expresses the intent better
• Another possible source of UB, but should be simple to handle
• We have to make sure the C library overwrites the memory - maybe we need to ask for guarantees upstream
• Things like "left in unspecified state if fails" are OK we just have to call assume_init only on success
• Perhaps we can improve things using a macro

I personally prefer to do it if upstream can guarantee at least that if a call succeeds the memory is fully overwritten.

[apoelstra]

Concept ACK -- though I'd like to see how invasive it is. I guess we currently use 0-initialization everywhere that we'd "naturally" use uninitialized bytes?

IIRC a long time ago we did use mem::uninitialized but converted to 0-initialization after the debacle around that method, so I guess going back would make sense.

[TheBlueMatt]

Man, things like this make me really wish x-lang-LTO were more broadly deployed. It would avoid us having to think too much about this - LLVM would mostly be able to remove the 0-init, at least in theory...

[elichai]

I have a feeling this will not affect performance in any way.
We only have quite small buffers (32 bytes mostly), and we run expensive cryptography operations.

Also, MaybeUninit doesn't always optimize well: e.g. rust-lang/rust#74267

And this will elevate logic bugs into memory bugs, so I'm not sure I'm in favor for this unless anyone can prove performance benefits

[Kixunil]

I guess we currently use 0-initialization everywhere that we'd "naturally" use uninitialized bytes?

Yes.

so I guess going back would make sense.

Sounds like a strong argument to me.

LLVM would mostly be able to remove the 0-init, at least in theory...

Yep, in theory. IDK how exactly the algos work on the C side, but it's possible LLVM can't see the bytes are initialized.

we run expensive cryptography operations.

I guess some of the operations are not that expensive? Perhaps it could make sense to use MaybeUninit for at least those? Anyway, this would need a lot of benchmarks. :(

MaybeUninit doesn't always optimize well

That issue is actually resolved, it was reopened only for adding tests. I think fixing obvious opt bugs is a better approach than leaving questionable code around.

[TheBlueMatt]

Yep, in theory. IDK how exactly the algos work on the C side, but it's possible LLVM can't see the bytes are initialized.

Without x-language-LTO it cannot, and that is generally not ever enabled because cc-rs is a bit overly conservative.

[Kixunil]

I mean, I was questioning whether it can even with x-lang-LTO. :)

cc-rs is a bit overly conservative

Didn't know, would be nice to improve one day.