`unwind_protect()` global option is falsely assumed to be immutable

[DavisVaughan]

Fixing #299, which ensures that we are always referencing the R global option cpp11_should_unwind_protect to determine if we need to unwind-protect or not, revealed a big issue with how this is currently set up.

CRAN emailed us about this, and actually reverted cpp11 0.4.4 back to 0.4.3 code (but bumping the version to 0.4.5) because this was such a problem.

An easy way to demonstrate the issue is to install cpp11 0.4.4 and run devtools::check() on the hdpGLM package (there are many others that fail with 0.4.4, including FIESTA MIMSunit amt arealDB campsis ggPMX hdpGLM mpathsenser tidyfit). You should get recursive gc issues and R will eventually crash.

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The core problem is that cpp11 expects that the cpp11_should_unwind_protect global option never changes. This is because we take a static pointer to its underlying logical(1) data, which we modify directly from C++ as needed.

This seems reasonable, but many package authors do this:

opt <- options()
on.exit(options(opt))

which does create a copy of every individual option value, including cpp11_should_unwind_protect, invalidating our pointer.

In particular it is done here for hdpGLM, which then calls tidyr::gather(), which uses C++ code written with cpp11, and that is always roughly where the crash occurs:
https://github.com/DiogoFerrari/hdpGLM/blob/4ba7b7c88a9a2bea344f13ae373f84b48a1d5a62/R/src_summaries.R#L1546-L1547

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A possible fix for this specific issue that Kevin suggested is to instead use an environment in the global option, because those won't be copied, and then put our cpp11 specific values in that environment.

One thing we also discussed is whether changing this will affect other already built packages that linked against "old" cpp11. Those packages will be looking for and modifying cpp11_should_unwind_protect, while any packages built with "new" cpp11 will be looking for cpp11_environment (or whatever we call it). This isn't ideal, but might be okay. At the absolute worst case the package would need to be reinstalled with "new" cpp11.

We could also consider versioning the slots inside the environment based on the current cpp11 version.

So it may look something like:

cpp11_environment <- new.env()

cpp11_environment_0_4_6 <- new.env()
cpp11_environment_0_4_6[["should_unwind_protect"]] <- TRUE

cpp11_environment[["0.4.6"]] <- cpp11_environment_0_4_6

options(cpp11_environment = cpp11_environment)

It is also possible that we don't want to do that, however. The following cpp11 code can crash if should_unwind_protect isn't set up correctly:

[[cpp11::register]]
void test() {
  cpp11::unwind_protect([&] {
    cpp11::unwind_protect([&] {
      Rf_error("oh no!");
    });
  });
}

If test() is called from R:

• It goes through .Call and our wrapper, which sets up the BEGIN_CPP11 and END_CPP11 macros
• It calls unwind_protect() which calls R_UnwindProtect(), a C function!
• Inside R_UnwindProtect(), we call unwind_protect()
• From there we Rf_error()
• The inner unwind_protect() catches that C error and promotes it to a C++ exception which is thrown.
• That is thrown across C stack frames, because we are inside the outer R_UnwindProtect() and no try/catch was set up within that to catch the unwind exception. The only try/catch is that most outer one set up by the macros
• That is UB and R crashes due to an uncaught exception

It is technically possible to be in a scenario where the outer unwind_protect() comes from a package built with one version of cpp11 and the inner unwind_protect() comes from a package built with another version of cpp11. If both calls think they should unwind protect (because they are looking at different versions of should_unwind_protect), then we crash.

[DavisVaughan]

I believe this is actually the cause of the insanely odd bug #244

• openxlsx sets options in .onAttach() https://github.com/ycphs/openxlsx/blob/f2fe1dbf8341bf9a479673d1cec4a7fc66c4a375/R/zzz.R#L2
• Then we use tidyr:::simplifyPieces() which calls into C++ through cpp11

So the "fix" here 9a62c3a only made the problem disappear because we went from using a reference to the global option to using a copy of it through:

static auto should_unwind_protect = detail::get_should_unwind_protect();

since the way to use a reference would have been

static auto& should_unwind_protect = detail::get_should_unwind_protect();

and changing to that will indeed cause this kind of crash again