explain why DispatchFromDyn does the check it does

1 files changed, 8 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/compiler/rustc_hir_analysis/src/coherence/builtin.rs b/compiler/rustc_hir_analysis/src/coherence/builtin.rs
index 67aef0a7c43..94f3e8706fc 100644
--- a/compiler/rustc_hir_analysis/src/coherence/builtin.rs
+++ b/compiler/rustc_hir_analysis/src/coherence/builtin.rs
@@ -157,6 +157,14 @@ fn visit_implementation_of_dispatch_from_dyn(tcx: TyCtxt<'_>, impl_did: LocalDef
     let infcx = tcx.infer_ctxt().build();
     let cause = ObligationCause::misc(span, impl_did);
 
+    // Later parts of the compiler rely on all DispatchFromDyn types to be ABI-compatible with raw
+    // pointers. This is enforced here: we only allow impls for references, raw pointers, and things
+    // that are effectively repr(transparent) newtypes around types that already hav a
+    // DispatchedFromDyn impl. We cannot literally use repr(transparent) on those tpyes since some
+    // of them support an allocator, but we ensure that for the cases where the type implements this
+    // trait, they *do* satisfy the repr(transparent) rules, and then we assume that everything else
+    // in the compiler (in particular, all the call ABI logic) will treat them as repr(transparent)
+    // even if they do not carry that attribute.
     use rustc_type_ir::sty::TyKind::*;
     match (source.kind(), target.kind()) {
         (&Ref(r_a, _, mutbl_a), Ref(r_b, _, mutbl_b))