The Rust team refers to this as an "effect system".  They originally had
one, but that one proved unworkable and was deleted.  They continue to
regard it as desirable but difficult to get right, and as a potential
future.  Here's some history
<http://irclog.gr/#search/irc.mozilla.org/rust/"effect system"> . They would
certainly welcome serious proposals or demos, although almost certainly
continuing to hold it out for post-1.0. They would think in terms of first
researching the most successful effect systems in other languages.

Dean

From:  Grant Husbands <[email protected]>
Date:  Wednesday, April 3, 2013 5:14 AM
To:  <[email protected]>
Subject:  [rust-dev] Library Safety

I've been following the Rust story with some interest and I'm excited about
the opportunities Rust brings for sandbox-free, secure system software.
However, there are some things that it lacks, that would otherwise make it
the obvious choice.

One that I feel is important that has been touched upon by others is having
static assurances about code, especially imported libraries. If I use a jpg
library, I want to be sure that it isn't going to do be able to do any
unsafe operations, use GC or access the file-system or the network. That
way, I don't have to trust the code and can instead be assured that it
simply cannot perform any dangerous actions.

Currently, to do that, I have to inspect the whole library. As a developer
without the time to do that, I'd much prefer for the import to be annotated
to indicate such things (or, ideally, to be annotated to indicate the
allowed dangers).

This could be seen, of course, as a precursor to capabilities - reducing
ambient authority is a key first step in getting a capability-secure system
- but it's also a simple way of getting assurances about code without having
to inspect it.

Does it seem like a reasonable thing to add? I may be able to find time to
work on it, should it be acceptable.

Regards,
Grant Husbands.
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