Re: Stop stepping on other perl extension's toes

[Torsten Schoenfeld <kaffeetisch gmx de>]

On 28.11.2010 07:23, Florian Ragwitz wrote:
> > * The new API needs some short POD paragraphs, maybe similar in
> > structure to what gperl_set_isa and gperl_prepend_isa have in
> > GType.xs.
>
> See the commit message. I don't consider the functions I added to be
> useful as a public interface. If a module wants to attach random
> pointers to arbitrary SVs and doesn't want to actually implement all of
> the hairy magic business, I believe it should just be using
> XS::Object::Magic.
>
> The reason for me making the symbols public is because they're needed in
> a couple of places other than GObject.xs where Glib and Gtk weren't
> reusing the infrastructure of GObject.xs for various reasons. Short of
> making those places do their job in a different or leaving them as buggy
> as they were, it seemed to be a reasonable thing to do to share the
> implementation.
>
> This is the reason the functions I added are rather lax in their
> argument checking. They're supposed to be called from a site already
> checking those things, such as gperl_get_object or
> gperl_get_object_check.

Agreed.  But what you wrote above is exactly what needs to be present in 
POD form: purpose, assumptions, caveats.  Whatever appears in gperl.h 
and is not marked as private (by a leading underscore, say) becomes part 
of our public API.

> [MGf_DUP, svt_dup]
>
> In addition, an svt_dup callback can also eliminate the need for
> tracking all perl gobjects as well as the associated global
> lock. However, this series of patches isn't going there just yet.

Oh!  I didn't know about this hook into cloning.  Very interesting and, 
as you note, the perfect replacement for the object tracking stuff.

But this makes me wonder: if in the future we start putting callbacks 
into the MGVTBL, then every user of the new functions will automatically 
also get these callbacks.  I don't think we want that.  So, should the 
MGVTBL become a parameter of all the new functions?