Can not create pointer like types in Rust (without excessive gunk)

[mstewartgallus]

I wanted to wrap the OpenGL API to create a safer interface. Like many other APIs the OpenGL API gives away integer tokens representing created objects. For example, the call glCreateProgram creates a GLuint token representing a shader program object. These tokens in the OpenGL API (and other similar APIs) are basically the same idea as pointer types. Because these tokens behave similarly to pointers I would like to wrap them in a type which has similar behaviours. For example, the glGetAttribLocation call gets a token representing an attribute, or buffer to fill with data of a shader program. I would like to wrap the token returned by glGetAttribLocation in a structure which has the same lifetime as the program token returned by glCreateProgram, but to do this I have to use an unneeded amount of pointers (to get proper lifetime guarantees.) Basically, I would like my wrapped glGetAttribLocation call to be like:

 impl GLContext {
  fn get_attrib_location <'r> (
     &self,
     program: Program <'r>,
     name: ~str
  ) -> Option <AttributeLocation <'r>> { /* Definition Omitted */ }

Instead of:

 impl GLContext {
  fn get_attrib_location <'r> (
     &self,
     program: &'r Program,
     name: ~str
  ) -> Option <AttributeLocation <'r>> { /* Definition Omitted */ }

[catamorphism]

far-future

[emberian]

Visiting for traige; nothing to add.

[thestinger]

Closing as duplicate of #5922

[thestinger]

It seems we have at least of few reports of this, going to clean it up a bit.