gnome-hackers.txt

-*-text-*-

This file is intended to contain information for those interested in
working on the GNOME bits of GnuCash.

Memory Management (care with reference counting):
-------------------------------------------------

I was unsure about when you're supposed to _unref widgets, etc., and
getting this right is critical to avoiding memory leaks on the one
hand and dangling pointers on the other.  So I asked on the gtk list,
and here was the result:

On 16 Aug 1999, Rob Browning wrote:
> 
> I've been poking around the gtk web site and in the docs for
> information on when you're supposed to call gtk_widget_unref.  I want
> to make sure I'm handling this right so I don't introduce memory
> leaks, but so far I haven't found anything describing the rules.
> Actually I'd like to know what the guidelines are for all the *_unref
> functions...
> 

Read gtk+/docs/refcounting.txt (or something like that).

Also I think some babble about object finalization at
http://pobox.com/~hp/gnome-app-devel.html (follow link to sample
chapters) might be helpful.

Basically you have to unref a widget you never use, but if you put it
in a container the container "assumes" the initial refcount of 1 and
the widget will be deleted along with the container.

Havoc