Proposed Change: Add Send bound to Boxed query types

Diesel 2.0
1

Description of the change

BoxedSelectStatement and BoxedWhereClause are now Send.

Why is this needed?

I’d like to enable the following API (from actix-diesel):

let results = await!(users::table.load_async(&state.db))?;

Where load_async sends the Query to a futures-aware thread pool, executes
it, and sends the result back.

This requires Query to implement Send. In a large API, all queries I interact with do implement Send. But the Boxed variants do not. The Boxed variants are required when conditionally filtering or conditionally joining in query building.

Why can’t this have a deprecation cycle?

Adding + Send bounds to the internal Box fields in the Boxed query variants isn’t something we could easily introduce in a backwards-compat way. I supose we could make SendBoxed___ types and .send_boxed() and deprecate the current types for a few cycles then deprecate SendBoxed___ to name it back to just Boxed___. That sounds more painful to me (two deprecation cycles) then just making the switch now.

Expected user impact

  • If you have generic methods that operate on a diesel query and wan to call .boxed() on it you’ll need to add a Send bound to your type parameters. I don’t know how often this is done in practice. I don’t do this.

  • If you have any sql types that themselves do not implement Send then you’d be blocked with no quick work-around. All of the sql types in diesel are Send though.

Migration strategy

  • The only breakage I would expect is in the generic bound on on a query type that then has .boxed() called on it. That should be a quick + Send bound added and all fixed.