Before, we would collapse any constraint of the form `Never ≤ T ≤
object` down to the "always true" constraint set. This is correct in
terms of BDD semantics, but loses information, since "not constraining a
typevar at all" is different than "constraining a typevar to take on any
type". Once we get to specialization inference, we should fall back on
the typevar's default for the former, but not for the latter.
This is much easier to support now that we have a sequent map, since we
need to treat `¬(Never ≤ T ≤ object)` as being impossible, and prune it
when we walk through BDD paths, just like we do for other impossible
combinations.
#21414 added the ability to create a specialization from a constraint
set. It handled mutually constrained typevars just fine, e.g. given `T ≤
int ∧ U = T` we can infer `T = int, U = int`.
But it didn't handle _nested_ constraints correctly, e.g. `T ≤ int ∧ U =
list[T]`. Now we do! This requires doing a fixed-point "apply the
specialization to itself" step to propagate the assignments of any
nested typevars, and then a cycle detection check to make sure we don't
have an infinite expansion in the specialization.
This gets at an interesting nuance in our constraint set structure that
@sharkdp has asked about before. Constraint sets are BDDs, and each
internal node represents an _individual constraint_, of the form `lower
≤ T ≤ upper`. `lower` and `upper` are allowed to be other typevars, but
only if they appear "later" in the arbitary ordering that we establish
over typevars. The main purpose of this is to avoid infinite expansion
for mutually constrained typevars.
However, that restriction doesn't help us here, because only applies
when `lower` and `upper` _are_ typevars, not when they _contain_
typevars. That distinction is important, since it means the restriction
does not affect our expressiveness: we can always rewrite `Never ≤ T ≤
U` (a constraint on `T`) into `T ≤ U ≤ object` (a constraint on `U`).
The same is not true of `Never ≤ T ≤ list[U]` — there is no "inverse" of
`list` that we could apply to both sides to transform this into a
constraint on a bare `U`.
This patch lets us create specializations from a constraint set. The
constraint encodes the restrictions on which types each typevar can
specialize to. Given a generic context and a constraint set, we iterate
through all of the generic context's typevars. For each typevar, we
abstract the constraint set so that it only mentions the typevar in
question (propagating derived facts if needed). We then find the "best
representative type" for the typevar given the abstracted constraint
set.
When considering the BDD structure of the abstracted constraint set,
each path from the BDD root to the `true` terminal represents one way
that the constraint set can be satisfied. (This is also one of the
clauses in the DNF representation of the constraint set's boolean
formula.) Each of those paths is the conjunction of the individual
constraints of each internal node that we traverse as we walk that path,
giving a single lower/upper bound for the path. We use the upper bound
as the "best" (i.e. "closest to `object`") type for that path.
If there are multiple paths in the BDD, they technically represent
independent possible specializations. If there's a single specialization
that satisfies all of them, we will return that as the specialization.
If not, then the constraint set is ambiguous. (This happens most often
with constrained typevars.) We could in the future turn _each_ of the
paths into separate specializations, but it's not clear what we would do
with that, so instead we just report the ambiguity as a specialization
failure.
Douglas Creager