Chain iterators to references of different lifetimies - rust

Question

I want to build a recursive function for traversing a tree in Rust. The function should always get the next element and an iterator over references to the ancestor elements.
For the iterator over ancestor elements, one could in principle use the chain and once methods. Consider the following simple example, where the tree is jsut a Vec (for the purpose of this demonstration):
fn proceed<'a, I>(mut remaining: Vec<String>, ancestors: I)
where
I: Iterator<Item = &'a String> + Clone,
{
if let Some(next) = remaining.pop() {
let next_ancestors = ancestors.chain(std::iter::once(&next));
proceed(remaining, next_ancestors);
}
}
Playground
This fails to compile because &next has a shorter lifetime than 'a:
error[E0597]: `next` does not live long enough
--> src/lib.rs:6:62
|
1 | fn proceed<'a, I>(mut remaining: Vec<String>, ancestors: I)
| -- lifetime `'a` defined here
...
6 | let next_ancestors = ancestors.chain(std::iter::once(&next));
| --------------------------------^^^^^--
| | |
| | borrowed value does not live long enough
| argument requires that `next` is borrowed for `'a`
7 | proceed(remaining, next_ancestors);
8 | }
| - `next` dropped here while still borrowed
I tried to overcome this by adding an explicit second lifetime 'b: 'a and forcing an explicit reference by something like let next_ref: &'b String = &next, but that yields a (different) error message as well.
One solution I came up with was to call map as follows:
let next_ancestors = ancestors.map(|r| r).chain(std::iter::once(&next));
As pointed out by #trentcl, this doesn't actually solve the problem, as the compiler then gets stuck in an infinite loop when compiling proceed for all the nested Chains when one actually tries to call the function.

Answer 1

The pieces of solution are already around, just to summarize:
As you already know, using map(|r| r) "decouples" the lifetime requirement of ancestors
from the lifetime of &next.
As already stated in the comments, fixing
the infinite recursion is a matter to change ancestors into a trait object.
fn proceed<'a>(mut remaining: Vec<String>, ancestors: &mut dyn Iterator<Item = &'a String>) {
if let Some(next) = remaining.pop() {
let mut next_ancestors = ancestors.map(|r| r).chain(std::iter::once(&next));
proceed(remaining, &mut next_ancestors);
}
}
fn main() {
let v = vec!["a".to_string(), "b".to_string()];
proceed(v, &mut std::iter::empty());
}