Defining types that represent native linked lists is hard

[jdm]

type node = {value: i32, next: *node}

This hits the recursive type error, so next has to be *u8 or something else.

[nikomatsakis]

While I agree this is a problem, there is a workaround. Something like this:

enum node = _node; // does this syntax still work?
type _node = { value: i32, next: *node };

ought to work. However, because this is a native linked list, it might not... this is because we get alignment of enums totally wrong. I'm actually not sure what's the best bug representing this issue, but #1535 is certainly a symptom.

[nikomatsakis]

To clarify, the enum node = _node syntax was (maybe still is) shorthand for:

enum node {
    node(_node)
}

Type recursion is permitted through an enum. Single variant enums are supposed to be represented without any discriminant, so this ought to be exactly equivalent to _node. Except that we get the alignment wrong, so it's not exactly equivalent in practice.