Re: Value reference counting

[Daniel Jacobowitz <drow at false dot org>]

On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 12:53:52PM -0600, Tom Tromey wrote:
> This will work fine for Python.  Also, I think that this model is
> clearer than what I did.
> 
> It seems to me that at this point, release_value is doing a walk of a
> linked list for no particular benefit.  Suppose we deleted release_value
> and replaced all calls to it with calls to value_incref?
> 
> This might result in some values living slightly longer than they
> otherwise would have (they will live until free_all_values, whereas
> currently they will be deleted at value_free time, which might or might
> not be sooner).
> 
> The only thing I could think of is whether this would affect watchpoint
> operation, since IIUC the watchpoint code examines all_values.  But, if
> this problem exists, it could be worked around by examining the
> reference count of values on the chain.
> 
> What do you think?

I had a good reason this would leak values for watchpoints, but now I
can't get it to work out.  Still, it makes me nervous.

free_all_values can have a very long interval.  But it looks like
breakpoint commands always run it, so not unbounded user behavior.
What about breakpoint conditions?  Is anything released and free'd
during a condition check going to linger until we stop?

-- 
Daniel Jacobowitz
CodeSourcery