This has the following positive effects:
1) The lifetime retrieved through 'Deref' is now long-lived.
2) An '&State<T>` can be created via an '&T'.
3) '&State<T>' is shorter to type than 'State<'_, T>'.
Sentinels resolve a long-standing usability and functional correctness
issue in Rocket: starting an application with guards and/or responders
that depend on state that isn't available. The canonical example is the
'State' guard. Prior to this commit, an application with routes that
queried unmanaged state via 'State' would fail at runtime. With this
commit, the application refuses to launch with a detailed error message.
The 'Sentinel' docs explains it as:
A sentinel, automatically run on ignition, can trigger a launch
abort should an instance fail to meet arbitrary conditions. Every
type that appears in a mounted route's type signature is eligible to
be a sentinel. Of these, those that implement 'Sentinel' have their
'abort()' method invoked automatically, immediately after ignition,
once for each unique type. Sentinels inspect the finalized instance
of 'Rocket' and can trigger a launch abort by returning 'true'.
The following types are now sentinels:
* 'contrib::databases::Connection' (any '#[database]' type)
* 'contrib::templates::Metadata'
* 'contrib::templates::Template'
* 'core::State'
The following are "specialized" sentinels, which allow sentinel
discovery even through type aliases:
* 'Option<T>', 'Debug<T>' if 'T: Sentinel'
* 'Result<T, E>', 'Either<T, E>' if 'T: Sentinel', 'E: Sentinel'
Closes#464.
pennae
Sergio Benitez