Re: bonobo-activation; freeing base services ...

[Maciej Stachowiak <mjs noisehavoc org>]

On 27Oct2001 10:55AM (-0400), Havoc Pennington wrote:
> 
>  
> > Shutdown functions that are necessary for correct operation of the
> > program are even worse,
> 
> This is just a pointless comparison. If you need the shutdown function
> for correct operation, you are _fucked_. Redesign the program. End of
> story.
> 

I think we're really losing the context of the conversation
here. Michael posted a patch that added a shutdown function, and I
asked him to redo it as an atexit handler. You strongly objected to
the atexit handler but had no comment about the original shutdown
function.

So I assumed you thought the shutdown function was a better approach.

> > Personally, I would rather have neither atexit handlers nor shutdown
> > functions, but given the choice, I prefer the atexit handler.
> 
> OK, let's drop the atexit() thing - what I'm most worried about is
> that we are potentially relying on either shutdown or atexit() to
> clean stuff up, and failing to handle abnormal termination. If we are,
> then dammit, fix the libraries. I don't care if you have to break API.
> This is a must-fix bug for 2.0.

Sounds fine to me. I think it's ORBit2 in this case that complains
about not freeing the ORB or other objects. Michael, do you know more
about the consequences of not freeing these resources.
 
> If we are not, then the shutdown function is purely optional, right?
> So why have a lib do the questionable thing of installing an atexit()
> function, for something that's totally optional?

If the shutdown function is optional then ideally it should not exist
at all. If cleanup is optional, it's not really cleanup.

 - Maciej