Re: [Libmesh-devel] Reference counting in opt mode?

[Roy S. <roy...@ic...>]

John Peterson wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 2:38 PM, Roy Stogner <roy...@ic...> wrote:
>> While explaining the reference counting base class to Paul the other
>> day, it struck me: why is this configure option independent of
>> compilation mode?  It's basically only used for debugging.  Instead of
>> just enabled or disabled, would it make more sense to add a third (and
>> new default) option, that enables reference counting for dbg and devel
>> modes but disables it for opt/prof?
> 
> Is this a performance issue?  Not every class is reference counted,
> and it's not like a reference-counted pointer which requires a lot of
> bookkeeping and junk to make sure all the counts are up-to-date.  I
> don't object to turning it off during opt, just wondering if there was
> a big slowdown for your code.

No perceptible slowdown that I've noticed; it just struck me as a 
"debugging" sort of feature that we were using even when not debugging. 
  I'd like to hear from Derek, though; I wasn't expecting an answer of 
"ASAP"!
---
Roy