Superfluous assignment does not give warning

[alvinhochun]

This code (playground):

#[derive(Clone, Copy, Debug)]
struct Boo {
    b: i32,
}

fn main() {
    let mut a = 1i32;
    dbg!(a);
    // Warn?
    a = a;
    dbg!(a);

    let mut boo = Boo { b: 1 };
    dbg!(boo);
    // Warn?
    boo.b = boo.b;
    dbg!(boo);
}

contains superfluous self-assignments (a = a and boo.b = boo.b). These assignments are useless (especially so in Rust since assignment operations cannot be overloaded) and almost always means incorrect code.

However, rustc does not give a warning at all. Even clippy doesn't.

This broken code for example went unnoticed for years: https://github.com/PistonDevelopers/conrod/pull/1377/files

Examples in other compilers/linters:

Clang gives warning: explicitly assigning value of variable of type 'int' to itself [-Wself-assign] on variable self-assignment. It does not, however, warn about struct field self-assignment. GCC gives no warnings whatsoever. (Compiler Explorer)

go vet gives a warning self-assignment of [*] to [*] on variable and struct field self-assignmet.

eslint has the lint no-self-assign which works for both variables and object properties.

[varkor]

It seems reasonable that this should be covered by the dead_code lint.