Collections of generic structs with embedded locks in golang

Question

Below I have an example of one structure which embeds another. I'm trying to figure out how to pass the more specific structure pointer to be stored in a less specific one. You can think of it as a collection. Wrapping in an interface doesn't seem to work, as doing so would make a copy, which isn't valid for structs with locks. Ideas?

package stackoverflow

import "sync"

type CoolerThingWithLock struct {
    fancyStuff string
    ThingWithLock
}

func NewCoolerThingWithLock() *CoolerThingWithLock {
    coolerThingWithLock := &CoolerThingWithLock{}
    coolerThingWithLock.InitThingWithLock()
    return coolerThingWithLock
}

type ThingWithLock struct {
    value    int
    lock     sync.Mutex
    children []*ThingWithLock
}

func (thingWithLock *ThingWithLock) InitThingWithLock() {
    thingWithLock.children = make([]*ThingWithLock, 0)
}

func NewThingWithLock() *ThingWithLock {
    newThingWithLock := &ThingWithLock{}
    newThingWithLock.InitThingWithLock()
    return newThingWithLock
}

func (thingWithLock *ThingWithLock) AddChild(newChild *ThingWithLock) {
    thingWithLock.children = append(thingWithLock.children, newChild)
}

func (thingWithLock *ThingWithLock) SetValue(newValue int) {
    thingWithLock.lock.Lock()
    defer thingWithLock.lock.Unlock()

    thingWithLock.value = newValue

    for _, child := range thingWithLock.children {
        child.SetValue(newValue)
    }
}

func main() {
    thingOne := NewThingWithLock()
    thingTwo := NewCoolerThingWithLock()
    thingOne.AddChild(thingTwo)

    thingOne.SetValue(42)
}

Error: cannot use thingTwo (type *CoolerThingWithLock) as type *ThingWithLock in argument to thingOne.AddChild

Answer 1

It's impossible to store the wrapping type in []*ThignWithLock since go has no notion of structural subtyping.

Your assertion that an interface will result in copying is incorrect , and you can get the desired effect by doing:

type InterfaceOfThingThatParticipatesInAHierarchy interface {
    AddChild(InterfaceOfThingThatParticipatesInAHierarchy)
    SetValue(int)
}

type ThingWithLock struct {
    ...
    children []InterfaceOfThingThatParticipatesInAHierarchy
}

func (thingWithLock *ThingWithLock) AddChild(newChild InterfaceOfThingThatParticipatesInAHierarchy) { ... }

As long as the interface is implemented on a *ThingWithLock and not ThingWithLock , there will be no copying of the receiver struct itself, only the pointer to the struct will be copied on the stack.