Tracking issue for static lifetime in statics (RFC #1623)

[nikomatsakis]

Tracking issue for "static lifetime in statics", rust-lang/rfcs#1623, which defaults omitted lifetimes in statics to 'static.

cc @llogiq

[nikomatsakis]

I would be up for mentoring someone in implementing this (nmatsakis on IRC).

[llogiq]

Cool! I'm not sure if I can find the time, but if I do, I'd be glad to code this up.

[nikomatsakis]

Here are some pointers into the code:

• first off, for historical reasons, the code often calls lifetimes regions :)
• when a region is elided, that winds up being resolved in librustc_typeck by a RegionScope, defined in librustc_typeck/rscope.rs; in particular the anon_regions() method is called to figure out what to do
• currently statics use an ExplicitRscope; this is selected in this code in collect.rs, which handles statics and constants
• we would want to switch that to a ElidableRscope with default set to ty::ReStatic, I think

[llogiq]

Great! I think with those pointers I should be able to make some progress even with a modest amount of time.

[nikomatsakis]

This should not have been closed.