[Rcpp-devel] reference counting, garbage collection, etc ....

[Romain François]

On 01/02/2010 03:07 PM, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
>
> On 2 January 2010 at 13:37, Romain François wrote:
> | Right, so looking at R_PreserveObject and R_ReleaseObject (still waiting
> | for some insight from R-devel) it seems that we can preserve and release
> | the same SEXP more than once. preserve adds the sexp to the list of
> | preserved SEXP (even if it is there already), and release release the
> | first one it finds.
> |
> | This leads me to thinking that we should make the garbage collection
> | stuff automatic and hidden, i.e when setting the SEXP of an RObject, we
> | automatically preserve it, and we release it automatically when the
> | object goes out of scope.
>
> That was always the idea with Rcpp objects.  The classes manage memory, the
> user doesn't have to worry.
>
> And the design was always like this -- release memory in the dtor.
>
> | Currently we have to manage this business manually, which will leads to
> | problems.
>
> "We" as in class implementers/authors, or "we" as users?   As authors, yes we
> do have to manage this, but that is because R forces us to, no?
>
> | So i propose that RObject::m_sexp becomes private (as opposed to
> | protected) and we had a protected setSEXP that :
> | - release the current SEXP if there is one
> | - preserve the new SEXP
> |
> | and make preserve and release protected (maybe even private members of
> | RObject), and remove the preserved bool.
>
> Sounds like a technically more sounds implementation, but nothing really
> changes for the user, no?  Ie there never was a user-accessibly method to
> unprotect/unpreserve.

This is currently accesible: preserve, release, isPreserved and 
forgetPreserve are public member functions of RObject, that the user 
needs to use, because I did not get R_PreserveObject/ R_ReleaseObject 
right. see the documentation in RObject.h for these.

I'll hide them and work them out automatically.

Probably not until tonight, but we should release anyway. this is a 
subtle problem.

> Am I missing something?
>
> Dirk
>


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Romain Francois
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