enum CRef: separate from struct CBox and simplify but expand the API#1471
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enum CRef: separate from struct CBox and simplify but expand the API#1471
enum CRef: separate from struct CBox and simplify but expand the API#1471Conversation
This allows other types, like `Vec<u8>`, `[u8; N]`, `&[u8]`, `Arc<[u8]>` instead of just `Box<[u8]>` (assuming `T = [u8]`). However, it requires an extra `Box` allocation and indirection. But the allocation is small and not very frequent, so it should be fine, and `CArc` stores a direct ptr, avoiding the extra indirection penalty (`CBox` is generally always accessed through `CArc` in `rav1d`).
…directly This simplifies a bunch of the APIs.
This avoids the extra `Box` and lets us make safety guarantees about each type's reference stability, which we depend on. For example, `Vec` doesn't have stable references (a wrapper than can't resize would, which we can add if needed).
randomPoison
approved these changes
Feb 12, 2026
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This does some API simplification for #1439 while also supporting other
impl AsReftypes. It separatesCReffromCBox.CBoxis the pure C abstraction over an owned C reference/"Box".CRefis anenumoverCBoxand other Rust-nativeimpl AsRefs. I tried usingdyn AsReffirst, but we make some safety guarantees about reference stability that we can't make about anyimpl AsRef, and that would force an extraBox. Moving thedyn AsRefone level higher toArc<dyn AsRef<T>>would be super nice, but in order to send theArcs through FFI boundaries, they can't wrap an unsized type, as we can't send unsized pointers over FFI boundaries (the ptr metadata API is still very unstable).Adding support for non
'static&Ts would be extremely useful and would allow us to eliminate a data copy, but that is much more tricky, as we'd have to thread the lifetime through a lot of places and probably rearrange some of theRav1dContext/Rav1dStateAPI.