Re: Fwd: Re: GTK_FLOATING broken in 2.9?

[Yevgen Muntyan <muntyan tamu edu>]

Tim Janik wrote:

> On Thu, 15 Dec 2005, Yevgen Muntyan wrote:
>
> > ANDREW PAPROCKI, BLOOMBERG/ 731 LEXIN wrote:
> >
> > > When you are calling your own code, it is not that much to keep 
> > > track of, but when I write code that is used by 1000 developers it 
> > > is much easier for me to take care of the reference issues inside 
> > > the API and make the large group of unknown developers free from 
> > > unknowingly creating reference counting bugs.
> > So, the thousands of another developers now will have to check
> > documentation for any GObject-derived class to figure out whether
> > they own reference or not. This is exactly why it's good when you
> > invent your wrappers, where it's clear that wrapper is made for
> > purpose and one might be interested in what that wrapper does.
> > So, if before the usage pattern was:
> >
> > object = create_object ();
> > ...
> > g_object_unref (object); /* I do know I own it */
> >
> > now it will be
> >
> > object = create_object ();
> > g_object_ref_sink (object); /* who knows what will happen in ... */
> > ...
> > g_object_unref (object);
>
>
> for the most part, users will not need to sink objects.
> it's language bindings and container implementations that do this.
> the floating flag is actually meant to make it easier on the user as
> outlined in:
>
>   
> http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/2.0/gobject/gobject-The-Base-Object-Type.html#floating-ref 
>
>
> and for historic heritage see:
>
>   gtk+/docs/refcounting.txt
>
>
> > These arguments about bugs and stuff are good arguments about why
> > one should use C++ or whatever other language with some sort of 
> > automatic
> > memory management.
>
>
> this is absolutely correct. reall OO applications should be written in
> languages with native OO support. for the scope of glib, gobject and 
> gtk+, we're stuck with maintaining an
> OO system implemented in C though, and we're simply doing our best to
> live up to that expectation.
>
>
> > C is known not to be safe, and it's known that you
> > must be careful. After introducing floating references one will still 
> > need
> > to be as careful, but he also will need to check one more thing - 
> > floating
> > reference (or sink it as soon as possible).
>
>
> no, you can treat a GObject with floating reference support the same way
> you treat GObjects in older glib versions, as if it had no floating ref
> support.
>
> > Maybe real solution would be for those 1000 guys to use mono or 
> > something?
>
>
> unfortunately this always depends on other project aspects, like the 
> platform
> and programming skills. the deployment plans, etc. etc.
>
> > Regards,
> > Yevgen
>
> ---
> ciaoTJ