[Vala] How to own a void *

[Jan Hudec <bulb ucw cz>]

Hello,

I have a big problem. I am getting some object in a "void *". The object is
owned, but it can be of any type, so I can't write the type to the .vapi. The
caller knows what type it will be, but I don't know how to make vala release
it. Moreover it's a noncopyable type, so I need to make vala transfer the
ownership. How can I do that?

In particular I have:

struct Argument {
    void * pointer;
    // some other members, too -- and it's actually a union in C
}

and than

Argument retval;
something.invoke(ref retval);
// now from nature of something I know Argument points to GValueArray and
// that it must be freed, so
ValueArray values = /*something*/retval.pointer;

Now what the /*something*/ should be? Remember, the object must be release by
me and it cannot be copied, so I need to transfer ownership.

Calling free later is not easy either -- the values variable is actually
member and will be needed a lot later.

-- 
                                                 Jan 'Bulb' Hudec <bulb ucw cz>