Re: [gdome]future memory management plans? (was: News(2) on CVS preparing 0.7.0)

[Paolo Casarini <casarini CS UniBO IT>]

On Wed, 7 Nov 2001, Tobias Peters wrote:

> Dear Paolo and other list members,
> 
> my impression is that the new memory management works as intended: gdome2
> now knows when to delete libxml's tree structure. There is another problem
> that did not think of when we dicussed about the whole memory management
> issue: It does not know what to delete.
> 
> Sure, the libxml tree structure beneath the document node is deleted at
> this point in time, using xmlFreeDoc, but let me cite from the DOM 2 Core
> recommendation:
> 
> "In the DOM, documents have a logical structure which is very much like a
> tree; to be more precise, which is like a `forest' or `grove', which can
> contain more than one tree."
> 
> The other trees can be subtrees cut off the main tree with removeChild,
> subtrees copied with cloneNode, or Nodes created by Document's
> createSomeNode. These are not deleted by xmlFreeDoc.
> 
> The conclusion is to me that it is not enough to keep track of living
> nodes at the document level. In addition to the document level, this has
> to be done at the tree level, too.
> 
> I think this is difficult to implement on the current code base. So I want
> to ask you people on this list, and the maintainers of gdome, how you're
> regarding this issue.

I think I can resolve the problem you have focused in the next week-end. I
think I can resolve it without adding any other memory structure only
using reference counting and information holded by the libxml2 xmlNode
structure.

Bye,
  paolo.