Add solana-crate-features workaround to avoid cargo feature thrashing (#5904)
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crate-features/README.md
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crate-features/README.md
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Cargo (as of 1.37) does not nicely handle the scenario where features of a
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dependent crate of multiple other crates in the tree vary.
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To illustrate the problem consider crates A, B and C arranged as follows:
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* Crate A and B are both members of a Cargo virtual manifest
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* Crate C provides two features, F1 and F2
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* Crate A requests feature F1 of C, crate B requests F2 of C
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When crate A and B are built together, `cargo` builds C with both feature F1 and
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F2 enabled (the union of all enabled features). However when A or B are built
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individually, `cargo` builds C with only feature F1 or F2 enabled.
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Unfortunately in all these cases, `cargo` will build crate C in the same target
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location and the outputs for C will be recreated every time the features for crate C
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change.
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From a clean workspace, building A individually first will cause C to be built
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as expected. Then build B individually and C will be re-built because F2 was
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enabled instead of F1. Now rebuild A and observe that C will be re-built again
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because F1 was re-enabled.
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In practice this problem is much less obvious as both A and B likely to not have
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a direct dependency on C, indirectly causing rebuilds of numerous other crates as well.
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The `solana-crate-features` offers a workaround to this "feature thrashing"
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problem by explicitly declaring all "C-like crates" with the union of all features
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that any other crate in the tree (either explicitly or implicitly) enable. All
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crates in the Solana source tree should depend on `solana-crate-features`.
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### Adding new dependent crates
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When unnecessary `cargo` rebuilds are observed, the first step is to figure what
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dependent crate is suffering from feature thrashing.
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This information is not readily available from the stock `cargo` program, so use
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the following steps to produce a custom `cargo` program that will output the
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necessary feature information to stderr during a build:
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```bash
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$ git clone git@github.com:rust-lang/cargo.git -b rust-1.37.0
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$ cd cargo
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$ git apply 0001-Print-package-features.patch
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$ cargo build
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$ mv ~/.cargo/bin/cargo ~/.cargo/bin/cargo.org
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$ cp ./target/debug/cargo ~/.cargo/bin/cargo
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```
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Rebuild with the custom `cargo` and search for indications of crates getting
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built with different features (repeated runs of `./scripts/cargo-install-all.sh`
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work great for this). When the problematic crate is identified, add it as a
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dependency of `solana-crate-features` with the union of all observed enabled
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features for that crate.
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### Appendix
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This command will enable some additional cargo log output that can help debug
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dependency problems as well:
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```bash
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export CARGO_LOG=cargo::core::compiler::fingerprint=info
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```
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