[ruby-core:99379] [Ruby master Bug#17048] Calling initialize_copy on live modules leads to crashes

Issue #17048 has been updated by alanwu (Alan Wu).


Thank you the code, Nobu! I think with your branch we could even keep `.allocate`, though people wouldn't be able to do much with it.
As long as no one is able to call `initialize_copy` after children (iclasses) exist, it's fine.
I think I was wrong about the number of places we would have to plug to implement an uninitialized state that resolves the issue.
Only the places that make new iclasses need to check for the uninitilaized state, so jsut `prepend`, `include` and maybe refinements.

Side note about the branch (57c7f9b), it's possible to get access to an uninitialized module in Ruby land by subclassing from `Module`:
```ruby
class Sub < Module
  def initialize_copy(other)
    p ancestors
  end
end

Sub.new.dup # [#<Sub:0x00007fa4ec015b10>, BasicObject]
```
It doesn't cause anything bad to happen AFAICT. I just found it interesting that the branch adds a normally impossible-to-construct module.
Maybe it's a positive because it makes Ruby more weird :D


----------------------------------------
Bug #17048: Calling initialize_copy on live modules leads to crashes
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/17048#change-86784

* Author: alanwu (Alan Wu)
* Status: Open
* Priority: Normal
* ruby -v: ruby 2.8.0dev (2020-07-23T14:44:25Z master 098e8c2873) [x86_64-linux]
* Backport: 2.5: UNKNOWN, 2.6: UNKNOWN, 2.7: UNKNOWN
----------------------------------------


Here's a repro script
```ruby
loop do
  m = Module.new do
    prepend Module.new
    def hello
    end
  end

  klass = Class.new { include m }
  m.send(:initialize_copy, Module.new)
  GC.start

  klass.new.hello rescue nil
end
```

Here's a script that shows that it has broken semantics even
when it happens to not crash.

```ruby
module A
end

class B
  include A
end

module C
  Const = :C
end

module D
  Const = :D
end

A.send(:initialize_copy, C)
p B::Const # :C, makes sense
A.send(:initialize_copy, D)
p B::Const # :D, makes sense
A.send(:initialize_copy, Module.new)
p (begin B::Const rescue NameError; 'NameError' end) # NameError, makes sense
A.send(:initialize_copy, C)
p B::Const # still NameErorr. Weird
```
This example shows that the problem exists [as far back as 2.0.0](https://wandbox.org/permlink/4dVDY9sNXJ803jh8).

I think the easiest way to fix this is to forbid calling `:initialize_copy`
on modules that have children. Another option is to try to decide on
the semantics of this. Though I don't think it's worth the effort as this
has been broken for a long time and people don't seem to to be using it.
Thoughts?




-- 
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