Re: Widget ref-count on creation

[Tristan Van Berkom <vantr touchtunes com>]

Russell Shaw wrote:
> so i assume this increases the refcount to 2 (couldn't tell
> by looking at gtk source). So, if the containing window is
> destroyed, it will release its refcount. However, the ttt
> widget will still have a refcount of 1 and hang around.
>
> What is the correct way of handling the refcount on widget
> creation?

    I believe that at some point in time (gtk+-1.2 ==> gtk+-2.0 I think)
that this behaviour was changed, in the prior; the correct process was to:

// create widget
my_widget = g_object_new(MY_OBJECT_TYPE, NULL); // <-- refcount 1

// add to a container
gtk_container_add(container, my_widget); // <-- refcount 2

// pass ownership to the container
g_object_unref(my_widget);               // <-- refcount 1


But since then (because that code seemed redundant or encumbersome),
GtkObject and its subclasses are created with what is called a floating
reference, which in turn is unreferenced by the container implementation
by calling gtk_object_sink(); (after the container takes ownership of
the GtkObject by calling g_object_ref(); )

So any GtkObject at creation time has no "owner".

Cheers,
                                    -Tristan