Resource Lifecycle

Layer 2: Design Choices

Core Question

When should this resource be created, used, and cleaned up?

Before implementing lifecycle:

• What's the resource's scope?
• Who owns the cleanup responsibility?
• What happens on error?

Lifecycle Pattern → Implementation

Thinking Prompt

Before designing lifecycle:

1. What's the resource cost?
   • Cheap → create per use
   • Expensive → pool or cache
   • Global → lazy singleton
2. What's the scope?
   • Function-local → stack allocation
   • Request-scoped → passed or extracted
   • Application-wide → static or Arc
3. What about errors?
   • Cleanup must happen → Drop
   • Cleanup is optional → explicit close
   • Cleanup can fail → Result from close

Trace Up ↑

To domain constraints (Layer 3):

"How should I manage database connections?"
    ↑ Ask: What's the connection cost?
    ↑ Check: domain-* (latency requirements)
    ↑ Check: Infrastructure (connection limits)

Trace Down ↓

To implementation (Layer 1):

"Need automatic cleanup"
    ↓ m02-resource: Implement Drop
    ↓ m01-ownership: Clear owner for cleanup

"Need lazy initialization"
    ↓ m03-mutability: OnceLock for thread-safe
    ↓ m07-concurrency: LazyLock for sync

"Need connection pool"
    ↓ m07-concurrency: Thread-safe pool
    ↓ m02-resource: Arc for sharing

Quick Reference

Lifecycle Events

Pattern Templates

RAII Guard

struct FileGuard {
    path: PathBuf,
    _handle: File,
}

impl Drop for FileGuard {
    fn drop(&mut self) {
        // Cleanup: remove temp file
        let _ = std::fs::remove_file(&self.path);
    }
}

Lazy Singleton

use std::sync::OnceLock;

static CONFIG: OnceLock<Config> = OnceLock::new();

fn get_config() -> &'static Config {
    CONFIG.get_or_init(|| {
        Config::load().expect("config required")
    })
}

Common Errors

Anti-Patterns

Related Skills