# Objective
I recently had an issue, where I have a struct:
```
struct Property {
inner: T
}
```
that I use as a wrapper for internal purposes.
I don't want to update my struct definition to
```
struct Property<T: Reflect>{
inner: T
}
```
because I still want to be able to build `Property<T>` for types `T` that are not `Reflect`. (and also because I don't want to update my whole code base with `<T: Reflect>` bounds)
I still wanted to have reflection on it (for `bevy_inspector_egui`), but adding `derive(Reflect)` fails with the error:
`T cannot be sent between threads safely. T needs to implement Sync.`
I believe that `bevy_reflect` should adopt the model of other derives in the case of generics, which is to add the `Reflect` implementation only if the generics also implement `Reflect`. (That is the behaviour of other macros such as `derive(Clone)` or `derive(Debug)`.
It's also the current behavior of `derive(FromReflect)`.
Basically doing something like:
```
impl<T> Reflect for Foo<T>
where T: Reflect
```
## Solution
- I updated the derive macros for `Structs` and `TupleStructs` to add extra `where` bounds.
- Every type that is reflected will need a `T: Reflect` bound
- Ignored types will need a `T: 'static + Send + Sync` bound. Here's the reason. For cases like this:
```
#[derive(Reflect)]
struct Foo<T, U>{
a: T
#[reflect(ignore)]
b: U
}
```
I had to add the bound `'static + Send + Sync` to ignored generics like `U`.
The reason is that we want `Foo<T, U>` to be `Reflect: 'static + Send + Sync`, so `Foo<T, U>` must be able to implement those auto-traits. `Foo<T, U>` will only implement those auto-traits if every generic type implements them, including ignored types.
This means that the previously compile-fail case now compiles:
```
#[derive(Reflect)]
struct Foo<'a> {
#[reflect(ignore)]
value: &'a str,
}
```
But `Foo<'a>` will only be useable in the cases where `'a: 'static` and panic if we don't have `'a: 'static`, which is what we want (nice bonus from this PR ;) )
---
## Changelog
> This section is optional. If this was a trivial fix, or has no externally-visible impact, you can delete this section.
### Added
Possibility to add `derive(Reflect)` to structs and enums that contain generic types, like so:
```
#[derive(Reflect)]
struct Foo<T>{
a: T
}
```
Reflection will only be available if the generic type T also implements `Reflect`.
(previously, this would just return a compiler error)
# Objective
There isn't really a way to test that code using bevy_reflect compiles or doesn't compile for certain scenarios. This would be especially useful for macro-centric PRs like #6511 and #6042.
## Solution
Using `bevy_ecs_compile_fail_tests` as reference, added the `bevy_reflect_compile_fail_tests` crate.
Currently, this crate contains a very simple test case. This is so that we can get the basic foundation of this crate agreed upon and merged so that more tests can be added by other PRs.
### Open Questions
- [x] Should this be added to CI? (Answer: Yes)
---
## Changelog
- Added the `bevy_reflect_compile_fail_tests` crate for testing compilation errors
