Progress

• Add benchmarks for Ref methods
• Optimize methods when T: Sized

Details

As described in #368, Ref<B, T> currently stores a B with the invariant that the referent has a valid size and alignment for T. This allows us to infallibly produce a &(mut) T at runtime (given an existing Ref as a witness to the size and alignment guarantees). Currently, we use Ptr::try_cast_into_no_leftover to re-compute the &(mut) T and .expect on its result since we know it can't fail:

This is expensive. In the long run, we should be able to remove most of this computation by storing the &(mut) T itself rather than the B (see #368), although that only works for some B types.

For the time being, and in order to support all B types, we can at least optimize this for the T: Sized case. In particular, since a &(mut) T has no pointer metadata when T: Sized, we can just short-circuit and cast the B pointer directly to a &(mut) T without performing any runtime checks. In other words, this entirely bypasses Ptr::try_cast_into_no_leftover.

We should also add benchmarks so we can measure the performance impact of this change, which I expect will be substantial.