Object Reference counting idea.

[Miguel de Icaza <miguel helixcode com>]

[Elliot, can you read the last paragraph?]

Dum de dum.

   So, Michael and I have been discussing for some time a feature that
we want to add to the base BonoboObject (dont worry, there are no API
changes for this, it is entirely an optimizaton).  We would like the
default ::ref and ::unref method implementations to keep track of
reference counts in a per-client fashion instead of having an
object-global reference count.

   This approach would solve a number of problems:

	1. Clients with ref leaks: causing objects to never be destroyed.

	2. Client with too many unrefs: causing other clients to run
           into failure modes if an object is unrefed too many times.

   I recently found out that in COM, the runtime would actualy keep
track of the references done for each client.  Upon death of the
client all the references for that object would be released for
example.  

   It is easy to do the code on the BonoboObject side, the only tricky
part is "detecting" the clients given a CORBA_Object (I have done no
research at all on this subject, and I am not sure if it is possible).

Miguel.