[Gtk-sharp-list] widget destruction

[Christopher David Howie]

 On Wed, 9 Mar 2011 10:54:13 -0500, Nicholas Frechette wrote:
> I disagree strongly with the implicit destruction of managed 
> resources
> through the use of that pattern and the finalizer. Having worked
> extensively on embedded systems where tight control over memory is
> always required, in my experience, it is always better to provide
> tools for programmers to fix bad usage than it is to brush it under
> the rug and do their job for them. The finalizer should be there only
> to warn that memory is leaking and if you must, free that memory, but
> the warning is key so that the code can be fixed. Finalizers add a
> cost that can be very hard to measure.
>  All objects that have managed resources to discard should implement
> Dispose and call base. Destroy should probably call Dispose (and not
> the other way around). Either way, documentation has to state clearly
> which is which and how to properly subclass widgets/other things.

 I lost Lluis' response while doing some maintenance on my email scripts 
 (whoops) but I wanted to suggest a compromise.  For some people it's 
 nice to get warnings when you've "leaked" an object that wraps a native 
 resource, but for others they don't care about that.  Neither approach 
 is necessarily wrong.  I'd support the option of having opt-in or 
 opt-out warnings that you control with a static property on the GObject 
 class.  Then people who are trying to tightly control their memory usage 
 can get warnings when they have failed to do so, and others who are less 
 worried about strict memory usage (for example when writing desktop 
 applications) can let the GC do its magic.

-- 
 Chris Howie
 http://www.chrishowie.com
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