Prototype: Add unstable `-Z reference-niches` option
MCP: rust-lang/compiler-team#641
Relevant RFC: rust-lang/rfcs#3204
This prototype adds a new `-Z reference-niches` option, controlling the range of valid bit-patterns for reference types (`&T` and `&mut T`), thereby enabling new enum niching opportunities. Like `-Z randomize-layout`, this setting is crate-local; as such, references to built-in types (primitives, tuples, ...) are not affected.
The possible settings are (here, `MAX` denotes the all-1 bit-pattern):
| `-Z reference-niches=` | Valid range |
|:---:|:---:|
| `null` (the default) | `1..=MAX` |
| `size` | `1..=(MAX- size)` |
| `align` | `align..=MAX.align_down_to(align)` |
| `size,align` | `align..=(MAX-size).align_down_to(align)` |
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This is very WIP, and I'm not sure the approach I've taken here is the best one, but stage 1 tests pass locally; I believe this is in a good enough state to unleash this upon unsuspecting 3rd-party code, and see what breaks.