swc/docs/adr/00004-add-ast-path-info-to-visitor.md
2022-07-05 04:38:27 +00:00

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# Provide more information to visitor methods
- Status: accepted <!-- optional -->
- Deciders: @kdy1, @kwonoj <!-- optional -->
- Date: 2022-06-30 <!-- optional -->
## Context and Problem Statement
Currently one can't get any information about parent node.
This is due to ownership restriction of rust.
We can't pass a reference to the parent to a visitor method.
Let's say we have a `CallExpr`, and we are now going to call `visit_mut_callee` from `visit_mut_call_expr`.
We want `&mut callee`, because it's the signature of `visit_mut_callee`.
So we **borrow it from CallExpr**.
As we mutabily borrowed something from `CallExpr`, we cannot pass `&CallExpr` to `visit_mut_callee`.
We can workaround this by
- taking `CallExpr.callee`
- call `visit_mut_callee(&mut self, callee: &mut Callee, parent: &CallExpr)`, with dummy callee in `parent.callee`.
- restore the original callee from `visit_mut_call`.
But doing this by hand is error-prone and doing this automatically by codegen is costly.
This is explicit `memmove`, and `memmove` is quite costly.
SWC moved from `Fold` to `VisitMut` because of `mmemove`.
## Decision Drivers
- Help plugin authors writing plugins.
## Considered Options
- [option 1] Stay with as-is.
- [option 2] Provide full information using `unsafe`.
- **[option 3] Provide small amount of information .**
We will expose the spans and kinds of the parent ast nodes for `VisitMut` and `Fold`, while passing an enum with parent data for `Visit`.
This difference is related to the restriction above.
This is the exact problem rust is trying to solve, and we don't want to violate the rules of rust.
## Decision Outcome
Chosen option: **[option 3] Provide small amount of information .**
This decision is taken because
- It's too hard to **port** plugins, because a plugin author has to recreate logic instead of porting, if the original babel plugin uses parent node information.
- Using `unsafe` in public API requires more discussion.
- We don't have good debugging api for plugins at the moment, so using `unsafe` in plugins is strongly discourages.