[geos-devel] Unclear objects lifetime and ownership issues in Monotone Chain components

[Mark Cave-Ayland]

On Thu, 2008-09-25 at 09:05 -0700, Martin Davis wrote:
> Mateusz,
> 
> IMO you're on the right track with the idea that 
> MCIndexSegmentSetMutualIntersector owns the segChains that it 
> allocates.  They can be deleted in it's destructor. 
> 
> I don't see the design problem.  What's wrong with having complex 
> long-lived structures which allocate internal objects, and then free 
> them when the structure is itself destroyed?

Right. I inferred from Mateusz's comments that there were problems with
circular references which couldn't be sorted out in a straightforward
manner by fixing the constructors/deconstuctors. That's why I was
suggesting that if this is the case then a different design should be
considered.

But if each object has a well defined set of internal objects which can
be freed upon destruction, then that is a different matter - in this
case either someone will need to fix them by hand - or preferably
implement hierarchical memory management.

Martin, would there ever be a case where a hidden internal object could
be shared between multiple parent objects?


ATB,

Mark.