Re: [Rubydotnet-developer] GC ideas

[Tim S. <ti...@ih...>]

On Mon, Jan 12, 2004 at 01:32:58PM +0100, Thomas Sondergaard wrote:
> I don't really understand how reference counting is error prone? Speaking 
> for my own implementation I use a System.Runtime.InteropServices.GCHandle in 
> the ruby-proxy-object to keep the .net object reference. The GCHandle 
> mechanism is a reference counting scheme for referencing .net objects 
> outside of the .net runtime. Similary, I use  rb_gc_register_address in 
> the .net-proxy constructor to tell ruby that there is an external reference 
> to that object. I don't see any significant potential for forgetting to 
> update the reference count, the major problem is the circular references 
> problem.
[...]

Okay, I was exaggerating :) Reference counting was working perfectly
well for me too. The hard part is avoiding race conditions with the
garbage collector(s) [System.GC.KeepAlive etc.], and my idea doesn't help with
this. However, when I was using reference counting I had (for Ruby calling
.NET) about 7 C# methods which would increase a reference count and return
an OBJ. It was assumed that the C code would store this in a struct
DotNetData and decrease the reference count when freed. I didn't like that
these methods depended on their callers to do the right thing.

-- 
The pigeonhole principle: If you have N pigeons and drill at least N + 1 holes
in them, you will have at least one pigeon with at least two holes in it.