Comment by jfecher

Creator of Ante here, passing `Rc<T>` as `&T` or `&Rc<T>` is a somewhat standard practice Ante inherits from Rust and C++ here.

As for cycles, `Rc t` in Ante isn't magic and when used in cycles it will leak. Ante does not use region inference, just the related, derived field of borrow-checking. The family tree there roughly resembles MLKit -> Cyclone -> Rust -> Ante in that regard.

When borrowing the inner element of an `Rc t`, the type system ensures that the resulting `ref t` cannot be dropped while it is still held. In particular, dereferencing an `Rc t` requires a unique value, but only gives you a shared value to the element: `Rc.as_mut: fn (uniq Rc t) -> mut t`. In practice, this means if you only have a shared ref to an Rc but need a reference to the element inside, you either need to clone the outer Rc (guaranteeing it won't be dropped while the borrow is alive), or use the local uniqueness conversion and avoid using any possible aliases while using the reference.