Implement intrinsic matching semantics of TransmuteFrom::transmute

[jswrenn]

TransmuteFrom models 'union transmute', which permits extensions of the trailing padding bytes of Src during the transmutation to Dst. This model is implemented by TransmuteFrom::transmute, which uses a union to perform the transmutation. Essentially:

pub unsafe fn transmute_via_union<Src, Dst>(src: Src) -> Dst {
    use core::mem::ManuallyDrop;

    #[repr(C)]
    union Transmute<Src, Dst> {
        src: ManuallyDrop<Src>,
        dst: ManuallyDrop<Dst>,
    }

    let transmute = Transmute {
        src: ManuallyDrop::new(src),
    };

    let dst = transmute.dst;

    ManuallyDrop::into_inner(dst)
}

Unfortunately, this long-form implementation might be quite heavy on the optimizer. For example, using ManuallyDrop can cause memcpys and allocas that LLVM cannot remove: rust-lang/rust#79914

It would therefore be nice to have a intrinsic version of this that wasn't so dependent on the optimizer. We could either, as @scottmcm suggests, modify transmute_unchecked to provide these semantics, or we could provide a new intrinsic (e.g., transmute_union) that provides these semantics.

[Lokathor]

it immediately occurs to me that the point of a ManuallyDrop is to prevent dropping, but it does that by being a union, so you're just sticking a union into a union... so you can just remove the ManuallyDrop layer

[RustyYato]

@Lokathor no ManuallyDrop is not a union, and it is required for any non-Copy fields of unions.

https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/mem/struct.ManuallyDrop.html

[Lokathor]

Oh my bad I'm thinking of MaybeUninit.