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Derive

The derive attribute invokes one or more derive macros, allowing new items to be automatically generated for data structures. You can create derive macros with procedural macros.

Example

The PartialEq derive macro emits an implementation of PartialEq for Foo<T> where T: PartialEq. The Clone derive macro does likewise for Clone.

#![allow(unused)]
fn main() {
#[derive(PartialEq, Clone)]
struct Foo<T> {
    a: i32,
    b: T,
}
}

The generated impl items are equivalent to:

#![allow(unused)]
fn main() {
struct Foo<T> { a: i32, b: T }
impl<T: PartialEq> PartialEq for Foo<T> {
    fn eq(&self, other: &Foo<T>) -> bool {
        self.a == other.a && self.b == other.b
    }
}

impl<T: Clone> Clone for Foo<T> {
    fn clone(&self) -> Self {
        Foo { a: self.a.clone(), b: self.b.clone() }
    }
}
}

The derive attribute uses the MetaListPaths syntax to specify a list of paths to derive macros to invoke.

The derive attribute may only be applied to structs, enums, and unions.

The derive attribute may be used any number of times on an item. All derive macros listed in all attributes are invoked.

The derive attribute is exported in the standard library prelude as core::prelude::v1::derive.

Built-in derives are defined in the language prelude. The list of built-in derives are:

The built-in derives include the automatically_derived attribute on the implementations they generate.

During macro expansion, for each element in the list of derives, the corresponding derive macro expands to zero or more items.

The automatically_derived attribute

The automatically_derived attribute is used to annotate an implementation to indicate that it was automatically created by a derive macro. It has no direct effect, but it may be used by tools and diagnostic lints to detect these automatically generated implementations.

Example

Given #[derive(Clone)] on struct Example, the derive macro may produce:

#![allow(unused)]
fn main() {
struct Example;
#[automatically_derived]
impl ::core::clone::Clone for Example {
    #[inline]
    fn clone(&self) -> Self {
        Example
    }
}
}

The automatically_derived attribute uses the MetaWord syntax.

The automatically_derived attribute may only be applied to an implementation.

Note

rustc ignores use in other positions but lints against it. This may become an error in the future.

Using automatically_derived more than once on an implementation has the same effect as using it once.

Note

rustc lints against any use following the first.

The automatically_derived attribute has no behavior.