Transfer rules of inout parameters

[philip chimento gmail com]

Next up! (I think this is the last of my Bugzilla-migration-triggered mail series.)

Transfer rules of inout parameters:

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gjs/issues/95

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gobject-introspection/issues/114

tl;dr: some time ago a commit to gobject-introspection broke a test in GJS and I've never been able to figure out whether gobject-introspection or GJS is wrong.

I always thought inout worked like this: a function with an inout parameter

/* inout: (transfer full): */
void func(char **inout) {
    g_assert (strcmp (*inout, utf8_const) == 0);
    g_free (*inout);
    *inout = g_strdup (utf8_nonconst);
}

should have exactly the same transfer rules as a function with two separate parameters

/* in: (transfer full):
 * out: (transfer full): */
void func2(char *in, char **out) {
    g_assert (strcmp (in, utf8_const) == 0);
    g_free (in);
    *out = g_strdup (utf8_nonconst);
}

That, at least I think, is how gobject-introspection specifies it (de facto, by virtue of the code working like that.) GJS interprets it as

in: (transfer none)
out: (transfer full)

and Giovanni commented on that bug, that he thought existing libraries required that interpretation.

The test in GJS has been commented out for 2 years waiting for me to figure this out. Does anyone know?

Regards,

Philip C