Are public fields and methods in private types meaningful?

help
1

Hi!

I was wondering if there was any situation where it would be required to make a field or method public inside of a private struct? I've been asking about this to some colleagues and we couldn't get any relevant example.

Take the following example as an illustration:

struct MyStruct {
    pub field: i32, // this `pub` is useless?
}

impl MyStruct {
    pub fn drop(self) {}  // this `pub` is useless?
}

If pub is never actualy useful inside of a private type I would gladly implement a lint for clippy or even rustc (which could be desired as having pub marked on some methods may lead to think that over methods are hidden at some level).

2

There's already a lint for this, it's just turned off by default.

#![warn(unreachable_pub)]

struct MyStruct {
    pub field: i32, // this `pub` is useless?
}

impl MyStruct {
    pub fn drop(self) {}  // this `pub` is useless?
}

warning: unreachable `pub` field
 --> src/lib.rs:4:5
  |
4 |     pub field: i32, // this `pub` is useless?
  |     ---^^^^^^^^^^^
  |     |
  |     help: consider restricting its visibility: `pub(crate)`
  |
note: the lint level is defined here
 --> src/lib.rs:1:9
  |
1 | #![warn(unreachable_pub)]
  |         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

warning: unreachable `pub` item
 --> src/lib.rs:8:5
  |
8 |     pub fn drop(self) {}  // this `pub` is useless?
  |     ---^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  |     |
  |     help: consider restricting its visibility: `pub(crate)`
2 Likes
3

It’s a bit of a different lint though. It doesn’t say anything about

#![warn(unreachable_pub)]

struct S;
impl S {
    pub(crate) fn foo() {}
}

and it does do a global analysis, e.g. it warns about

#![warn(unreachable_pub)]

mod m {
    pub fn foo() {}
}

but adding one (or a chain of) pub use that expose(s) the function publicly (on a crate level) makes the warning go away

#![warn(unreachable_pub)]

mod m {
    pub fn foo() {}
}
pub use m::foo as m_foo;
4

Thank for your answers, it sounds weird that unreachable_pub isn't turned on by default.

However the later case does require pub in pub fn foo() {}, overwise I get:

error[E0603]: function `foo` is private
  --> tt.rs:10:18
   |
10 | pub use self::m::foo as m_foo;
   |                  ^^^ private function

And this reexport makes m_foo callable from parent modules.

In this case I still don't understand how foo could be reached just by replacing pub by pub(crate) (which is only more restrictive, right?). Is this an issue with the lint?

5

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