Stop compiling the GPL crate GPUI drags in behind the framework

Lumbridge is Apache-2.0, and decision 0023 quietly made it link GPL-3.0-or-later. `crates/gpui/Cargo.toml` at the pinned revision carries `ztracing.workspace = true` -- unconditional, not optional, not behind a feature -- and `ztracing` is GPL-3.0-or-later, as are the `zlog` and `ztracing_macro` it pulls. `sum_tree` asks for it too. The path is the ordinary Linux build, not an `--all-features` artefact and not a dev-dependency: lumbridge -> gpui_platform -> gpui_linux -> gpui -> ztracing -> zlog -> ztracing_macro `cargo deny check licenses` failed on it, exit 4. This is the second thing decision 0023 got wrong by reading the manifests of the crates it added instead of resolving the graph; the first was believing there were two Zed Git sources when there are five. Both were found by a gate that had never been run. There was no feature to turn off, so the choice was to relax the licence policy, drop the framework, or stop compiling the crate. `ztracing` is now redirected by a `[patch]` table at `crates/lumbridge-ztracing-shim`, a first-party zero-dependency no-op under Apache-2.0. `zlog` and `ztracing_macro` were reachable only through it and leave the lockfile with it. The shim is small because the usage is: nine `#[instrument(skip_all)]` sites across `gpui/src/svg_renderer.rs`, `sum_tree/src/sum_tree.rs` and `sum_tree/src/cursor.rs`, and nothing else. Upstream's own crate compiles to almost exactly this whenever the `ztracing` cfg is off, which is every build that is not a Tracy profiling build, so no shipping behaviour is lost. It is a proc-macro crate deliberately: such a crate can export nothing but proc macros, so an upstream revision that starts using `ztracing::Span` or `ztracing::info_span!` fails to compile and names the shim, rather than resolving to something plausible. `scripts/workspace-guard.sh` gained a third gate asserting, against Cargo.lock rather than the manifest, that no `ztracing`, `zlog` or `ztracing_macro` resolves to a Zed source and that the patch table is still present. `cargo deny` already checks this, and the duplication is the point: `scripts/ci.sh` downgrades a missing cargo-deny to a warning unless `LUMBRIDGE_CI_STRICT=1`, and that is how the licence closure went ungated once already. A `[patch]` is an unusually quiet thing to lose -- delete the table and everything still compiles, still passes, and is GPL again. Removing the three GPL rejections exposed a fourth that had been sitting beside them and was never reported separately: `libbz2-rs-sys` under `bzip2-1.0.6`, reached through async-compression <- http_client <- gpui. It is BSD-style and permissive with no copyleft, and is allowed in `deny.toml` with that reasoning written down. `cargo deny check licenses sources` is exit 0 for the first time. The Git-source allowances in `deny.toml` are all still needed; the patched crate's own source was `zed.git`, which `gpui` still requires. Decision 0025 records the whole of it. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01SPYebLiN2w4TqnHUYGdECq
2026-09-01 14:02:59 -07:00
parent 3cb5e1002c
commit 2aab0c4aab
8 changed files with 395 additions and 92 deletions
@@ -89,9 +89,22 @@ failure is unattributable:
   versions of new `clippy::pedantic` lints arrive as hard errors under
   `-D warnings`. Isolating this stage is what stops a lint avalanche being
   mistaken for a GPUI API break.
-3. **`deny.toml`.** Add `zed-industries/zed` and `zed-industries/font-kit` to
-   `allow-git`. The second is not optional: `gpui_wgpu` reaches `font-kit`
-   through a Git source, so the move brings two Git sources, not one.
+3. **`deny.toml`.** Add the Zed Git sources to `allow-git`. This record
+   originally said there were two, `zed-industries/zed` and
+   `zed-industries/font-kit`. **That was wrong: there are five.** The graph also
+   carries `xim-rs` (X11 input methods, feeding `gpui_linux` -- the IME path,
+   so load-bearing for a hard gate rather than incidental), `wasm_thread`
+   (reached twice, through `gpui_web` and through `scheduler` <- `gpui`), and
+   `scap`, which resolves in the lockfile without being reachable in this
+   target's graph and so is named before some later platform's build finds it
+   first.
+
+   The error is worth keeping visible rather than quietly corrected. It was made
+   by reading the manifests of the two crates being added, which is exactly the
+   reasoning that misses a transitive Git source; only resolving the graph
+   answers the question. `cargo deny check sources` is what caught it, on the
+   commit after the allowance was written -- which is the argument for running
+   that check at all.
 4. **The dependency swap.** `gpui` and `gpui_platform` at the pinned rev;
   `wayland`/`x11` requested on `gpui_platform`, where they still mean
   something; and `Application::new()` — which does not exist at that revision —
@@ -101,10 +114,21 @@ failure is unattributable:
 6. **The probe changes job**: it stops proving AccessKit exists and starts
   proving the next revision still compiles.

-The renderer swap from blade to wgpu in stage 4 is the least characterised risk.
-`scripts/native-libs.sh` addresses one missing `libxkbcommon-x11` symlink and
-says nothing about a Vulkan or GL loader, and the Gitea job installs no wgpu
-dependency. Expect to learn something here.
+The renderer swap from blade to wgpu in stage 4 was called the least
+characterised risk here, and at build time it cost nothing: the whole closure
+compiled on the existing `libxkbcommon-x11` shim, with no Vulkan or GL loader
+problem and no new native dependency. That is not the same as the risk being
+disproven. Nothing in `cargo check`, `clippy`, or the test suite opens a window,
+so the renderer has still never run. The risk moved from build time to first
+launch; it did not go away.
+
+The rest of stage 4 was smaller than expected. The entire API delta across the
+ten-month jump was three signatures over nineteen sites: `Window::focus` taking
+the `App` it used to reach through the window, `flex_shrink` taking the factor
+it used to assume, and `Application::new` becoming
+`gpui_platform::application()`. No crate outside `apps/lumbridge` needed any
+change, because none of them imports a gpui type -- the narrow boundary
+`ARCHITECTURE.md` insisted on is the reason this was an afternoon.

 ## What is knowingly still unmet

@@ -0,0 +1,126 @@
+# 0025: GPUI's GPL dependency is patched out, not tolerated
+
+Status: accepted. Amends decision 0023, which chose the pinned Zed revision
+without noticing what came with it. Does not change that revision.
+
+## The decision
+
+`ztracing` is redirected, by a `[patch]` table in the root manifest, at
+`crates/lumbridge-ztracing-shim` — a first-party, zero-dependency, no-op crate
+under Apache-2.0. Nothing else about decision 0023's pin changes.
+
+## The problem
+
+Lumbridge is Apache-2.0, and `DISTRIBUTION.md` treats the licence closure of
+everything the product links as a hard gate. Decision 0023 replaced published
+`gpui` releases with a pinned revision of Zed's monorepo, and a monorepo
+revision does not bring only the crates you named. `crates/gpui/Cargo.toml` at
+`ce48461` carries:
+
+```toml
+ztracing.workspace = true
+```
+
+Unconditional. Not optional. Not behind a feature. `ztracing` is
+**GPL-3.0-or-later**, and it pulls `zlog` and `ztracing_macro`, both also
+GPL-3.0-or-later. `sum_tree` asks for `ztracing` as well. The path is entirely
+inside the build that ships:
+
+```text
+lumbridge -> gpui_platform -> gpui_linux -> gpui -> ztracing -> zlog
+                                                            -> ztracing_macro
+```
+
+This is not an `--all-features` artefact and not a dev-dependency. It is the
+ordinary Linux build. `cargo deny check licenses` failed on it, exit 4, three
+rejections, each `license is not explicitly allowed`.
+
+That is the second thing decision 0023 got wrong by reading manifests instead of
+resolving a graph. The first was believing there were two Zed Git sources when
+there are five. Both were caught by a gate that had never been run, and both
+argue the same point: the transitive closure is the only thing that answers a
+licensing question.
+
+## What was rejected
+
+**Relax `deny.toml`.** Adding GPL-3.0-or-later to the allow list would trade the
+product's licence for a green build. The gate exists precisely to stop that
+being done quietly.
+
+**Turn the feature off.** There is no feature. `ztracing.workspace = true` has
+no `optional = true` beside it, and no `cfg` guards its use sites.
+
+**Drop GPUI.** That throws away decision 0023 and, until `lumbridge-toolkit`
+exists, the product's ability to draw a window.
+
+**Vendor and relicense.** Not available: GPL is GPL.
+
+## What was chosen, and why it is small
+
+Every use of `ztracing` and `zlog` across the eighteen Zed packages in the
+resolved graph, found by grepping the vendored checkout rather than the
+manifests:
+
+- `gpui/src/svg_renderer.rs`, two sites: `#[ztracing::instrument(skip_all)]`
+- `sum_tree/src/sum_tree.rs` and `sum_tree/src/cursor.rs`:
+  `use ztracing::instrument;`, then seven `#[instrument(skip_all)]` sites
+- `sum_tree/src/sum_tree.rs:1401`: `zlog::init_test()`, inside `#[cfg(test)]`,
+  behind a dev-dependency Cargo never resolves for a non-workspace package —
+  which is why no `zlog` shim is needed and why `zlog` leaves the lockfile
+  entirely
+
+Nine attribute sites, all `skip_all`, and nothing else. So the shim is one
+attribute proc-macro that returns its input unchanged. Upstream's own crate
+compiles to almost exactly that whenever the `ztracing` cfg is off — which is
+every build that is not a Tracy profiling build — so no shipping behaviour is
+lost. Lumbridge ships no telemetry by default in any case.
+
+Because `zlog` and `ztracing_macro` were reachable only through `ztracing`,
+patching the one package removes all three: they no longer appear in
+`Cargo.lock`.
+
+## How it is held
+
+`scripts/workspace-guard.sh` gained a third gate. It asserts, against
+`Cargo.lock` rather than the manifest, that no `ztracing`, `zlog` or
+`ztracing_macro` resolves to a Zed source, and that the `[patch]` table is still
+in `Cargo.toml`.
+
+`cargo deny` already checks this, so the duplication is deliberate.
+`scripts/ci.sh` downgrades a missing `cargo-deny` to a warning unless
+`LUMBRIDGE_CI_STRICT=1`, and that arrangement is how the licence closure went
+ungated once already — green on a runner that had never installed the tool. The
+guard needs no tool and runs in milliseconds. It is what makes deleting the
+patch a build failure rather than a silent relicensing of the product.
+
+A `[patch]` is an unusually quiet thing to lose: delete the table and everything
+still compiles, still passes every test, and is GPL again.
+
+## The unrelated failure this exposed
+
+Removing the three GPL rejections left one behind that had been sitting beside
+them: `libbz2-rs-sys` under the `bzip2-1.0.6` licence, reached through
+`bzip2 -> compression-codecs -> async-compression -> http_client -> gpui`. It is
+BSD-style and permissive — retain the notice, do not misrepresent the origin, no
+warranty — with no copyleft and no source-disclosure term, and it is allowed in
+`deny.toml` with that reasoning written down. It is recorded here because it was
+never reported as a separate finding; it was simply the fourth line of a failure
+everyone read as being about GPL.
+
+## What the next revision bump must check
+
+Whether upstream started using a `ztracing` symbol the shim does not provide.
+The shim is a proc-macro crate, which can export nothing except proc macros, so
+`ztracing::Span`, `ztracing::info_span!`, `ztracing::init()`, `ztracing::Level`
+and `ztracing::field` all fail to resolve at compile time and name this crate in
+the error. There is no silent fallback.
+
+The fix then is not to widen the shim by reflex. If the new use is another
+zero-cost annotation, add the matching no-op — which means splitting the shim
+into a library crate and a proc-macro crate, since one package cannot be both.
+If upstream has started routing real telemetry through `ztracing`, that is a
+decision record, because no telemetry is enabled by default here.
+
+And run `cargo deny check licenses sources` at the new revision before anything
+else. A monorepo pin can acquire a *different* GPL crate on a different path,
+and reading the manifests of the crates you added will not find it.