Magic type wrapping.

[Ben-PH]

In a similar vein to how magic-numbers is a code smell, to what extent are magic-types the same?

In BootstrapConfig, there are many fields that are int-primitives:

/// Bootstrap configuration.
#[derive(Debug, Deserialize, Clone)]
pub struct BootstrapConfig {
    // snip
    /// thread count
    pub thread_count: u8,
    /// period per cycle
    pub periods_per_cycle: u64,
    /// max datastore key length
    pub max_datastore_key_length: u8,
    // snip
}

What prompted this discussion was a minor restructure I'm working on meant that I had to be careful about which field/variable I was working with. Using this wrapper would mean that it is less likely for people to accidently mix things up when they have the same primitives.

would it be worth it to, for example make thread_count a ThreadCount(pub u8)? and similar to other fields?

I think the value of this exists as a spectrum. I think ThreadCount is a good example of where it would be useful as it adds more self-documentation to the code-base at large, but in some use-cases, it's just code-bloat.

If nothing else, I home this discussion gives food for thought to my fellow devs.