Dialyzer woes: How to ignore certain warnings in macro-generated code?

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1

The following problem came up while developing TypeCheck.
For who does not know about it, it is a library which adds runtime type-checking functionality to your existing Elixir code by using macros that take your @type and @spec annotations and turn them into snippets that run before/after your functions.

A problem however occurs when people are using it in combination with Dialyzer. (c.f. issue #85)
Here is a minimal example:

defmodule Example do
  defstruct [:age]
  @type t() :: %__MODULE__{age: integer()}

  @spec new(integer()) :: Example.t()
  def new(age) do
    %__MODULE__{age: age}
  end

  # The following code is generated by a macro:
  defoverridable new: 1

  def new(param) do
    super_result = super(param)
    maybe_error =
      if is_map(super_result) do
        {:ok, super_result}
      else
        {:error, :not_a_map}
      end
    case maybe_error do
      {:ok, _} -> super_result
      {:error, problem} -> raise "Result did not pass type check: #{problem}."
    end
  end
  # (macro-generated code ends here)
end

The ā€œmacro-generated codeā€ here is a simplified version of the actual code that would be inserted. (In the actual code we would first check whether the result is a map (as we do right now), then check whether the result contains the proper struct key and other expected keys, and then check whether :age is an integer. But nevermind that, since the problem already occurs with this simplified snippet.)

However, in this particular case the user-written implementation of new is simple enough to be ā€˜trivially correctā€™.
But this makes Dialyzer complain about the checks which have been inserted. Specifically:

lib/dialyzer_tests.ex:0:pattern_match
The pattern can never match the type.

Pattern:
{:error, _problem}

Type:
{:ok, %Example{:age => _}}

________________________________________________________________________________
lib/dialyzer_tests.ex:0:pattern_match
The pattern can never match the type.

Pattern:
false

Type:
true

So there are one small and one big problem:

  • Small: The line numbers seem to be messed up. I have no clue why. Maybe Dialyzer/Dialyxir is partially confused by defoverridable?
  • Big: Dialyzer complains about the error parts of this code not being reachable. But this is somewhat of a ā€˜false positiveā€™. It would be a proper warning if this code were to be written by hand. But since this is machine-generated code, warnings for branches that can never happen are very unhelpful. (As an aside: the BEAM compiler is clever enough to optimize them away as well in many cases.)

So this brings me to my question:

  • Is it possible to make Dialyzer happy with this kind of machine-generated code?
  • If not, is there a way to fully disable warnings for machine-generated code?
2

if apply(Kernel, :is_map, [super_result]) might do the job, though it would also introduce some perf overhead.

If not, is there a way to fully disable warnings for machine-generated code?

Something like @dialyzer {:nowarn_function, generated_fun: arity}.

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3

You can pass generated: true to quote to get AST tagged with that option. Hereā€™s an example from Kernel.is_struct:

If youā€™re producing AST nodes directly, generated: true goes in the metadata (second position in the tuple):

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4

All code which TypeCheck generates is annotated with generated: true but this does not seem to silence Dialyzer in the slightest. Maybe I am doing something wrong of course (Iā€™m eager to learn how to improve the code further!)

:+1: This technique seems to work. I have altered the wrapper-generating code to (a more complicated variant of):

defmodule Example do
  defstruct [:age]
  @type t() :: %__MODULE__{age: integer()}

  @spec new(integer()) :: Example.t()
  def new(age) do
    %__MODULE__{age: age}
  end

  # The following code is generated by a macro:
  defoverridable new: 1

  def new(param) do
    super_result = super(param)
    __new__type_check_return_type_wrapper__(super_result)
  end

  @compile {:inline {__new__type_check_return_type_wrapper__: 1}
  @dialyzer {:nowarn_function, {__new__type_check_return_type_wrapper__: 1}
  defp __new__type_check_return_type_wrapper__(super_result)
    maybe_error =
      if is_map(super_result) do
        {:ok, super_result}
      else
        {:error, :not_a_map}
      end
    case maybe_error do
      {:ok, _} -> super_result
      {:error, problem} -> raise "Result did not pass type check: #{problem}."
    end
  end
  # (macro-generated code ends here)
end

This way:

  • Dialyzer no longer complains about unused code inside the return type check
  • The code is still inlined into the original function by the compiler
  • If someone is messing up the return result of the original function to the point where the result is vastly different from the written @spec, Dialyzer is still able to produce a warning as it should.

Thank you very much for your help, @al2o3cr and @sasajuric !

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