[fpc-devel] refcounting in fcl-passrc

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Sun, 22 Aug 2010, Marco van de Voort wrote:

> In our previous episode, Michael Van Canneyt said:
>>> Since in both cases the resultparent is an already used reference, shouldn't
>>> it be increfed ?
>>
>> Probably.
>>
>> Till you told me, I wasn't even aware that there was a refcounting mechanism.
>> I see no reason why there should be one, so I'd be in favour of removing it
>> alltogether.
>
> Then you need some global list to add them to. (to be able to deallocate).

Why ?

> It might be the various TPasModule sections already double as something like
> this, but that has to be validated.

Each element should deallocate it's "children". 
Since an element tree is always a strict tree, this is unambiguous.
Refcounting is not needed at all.

I'm not in favour of a global list and a 'garbage collection' style of memory 
management. It makes manipulating the tree a pain.

This will take some reworking, apparently (each destructor must be filled
with code to deallocate children).  For the time being, try the incref.


Michael.