Re: Sinkability considered harmful

[muppet <scott asofyet org>]

On Jan 4, 2006, at 6:33 AM, Tim Janik wrote:

> On Tue, 3 Jan 2006, Federico Mena Quintero wrote:
>
> > The "floating" flag was introduced in GtkObject to:
...
> > 	2. make things easier for language bindings.
>
> this is not quite right. the floating flag is of no use to langauge  
> bindings,
> if it affects them, it makes things harder for LBs.

Actually (to throw a wrench in things), the floating flag *does* make  
language bindings easier.  The GtkObject wrapper can *always* do an  
unconditional ref and sink; if it was floating, e.g., returned from a  
constructor, the object is now owned by the wrapper, and if not, the  
wrapper is just another owner.  For non-floating objects, the binding  
author must now distinguish constructors from other functions in  
order to avoid leaking objects.  Gtk2-Perl has seen a lot of  
reference-count leaks related to GObject-returning functions that we  
marked incorrectly (human error), but none related to GtkObject- 
returning functions.

That said, the main impetus for the human error involved in marking  
API functions has been the inconsistency of ownership for returned  
objects, that is, violation of the Principle of Least Surprise.  It's  
not cool to have to look at the reference docs for every single  
function to verify whether you need to unref the return value.


--
Found: Poop
Someone's dog lost some poop in front of the Studio Theatre.  
Unfortunately, this article has been slightly damaged since it was  
neglectfully left on the sidewalk. It is available to its rightful  
owner (or its owner's rightful owner) if they so desire to come and  
scrape it off my shoe.
  -- someplace on the internet