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Expose Metadata's inner Arc (e.g. as_arc / into_arc) #10684

Description

@alamb

Is your feature request related to a problem or challenge?

While updating DataFusion to arrow 60 I found the new Metadata struct introduced in #10075 does not expose its underlying reference-counted map. This hurts in two places:

  1. Memory accounting: DataFusion tracks heap usage of plans/schemas and dedupes allocations shared via Arc by pointer. Since Metadata hides its allocation, DataFusion can only approximate its size and double-counts clones that share the same map:
impl DFHeapSize for Metadata {
    fn heap_size(&self, ctx: &mut DFHeapSizeCtx) -> usize {
        // `Metadata` does not expose its underlying reference-counted map, so
        // this approximates the `BTreeMap` entries' sizes and cannot dedupe
        // instances that share the same allocation.
        self.iter()
            .map(|(k, v)| {
                size_of::<(String, String)>() + k.heap_size(ctx) + v.heap_size(ctx)
            })
            .sum()
    }
}
  1. Zero-copy conversion to wrapper types: DataFusion's FieldMetadata also stores an Arc<BTreeMap<String, String>>. The inbound direction is cheap (Metadata: From<Arc<BTreeMap<String, String>>>), but the outbound direction has to go through BTreeMap, which clones the map whenever the Arc is shared:
impl From<Metadata> for FieldMetadata {
    fn from(value: Metadata) -> Self {
        // From<Metadata> for BTreeMap clones the map when the Arc is shared
        Self::new(value.into())
    }
}

Describe the solution you'd like

Accessors that expose the shared map, for example Metadata::as_arc(&self) and Metadata::into_arc(self). Then the conversion is always cheap:

impl From<Metadata> for FieldMetadata {
    fn from(value: Metadata) -> Self {
        Self::new_from_arc(value.into_arc())
    }
}

and memory accounting can dedupe by allocation:

impl DFHeapSize for Metadata {
    fn heap_size(&self, ctx: &mut DFHeapSizeCtx) -> usize {
        let map = self.as_arc();
        if !ctx.count_allocation_once(Arc::as_ptr(map)) {
            return 0; // already counted a clone sharing this allocation
        }
        map.iter().map(|(k, v)| ...).sum()
    }
}

Describe alternatives you've considered

Approximating the size and accepting the extra clone, as shown above.

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