the sorry saga of the talloc soname 'fix'

[Sam Liddicott]

* Michael Adam wrote, On 08/07/09 10:17:
> Sam Liddicott wrote:
>   
>> * Michael Adam wrote, On 08/07/09 09:42:
>>     
>>> The remedy for all our problems is to just get rid of
>>> talloc_reference/talloc_unreference, the source of all
>>> evil and grief.
>>>
>>> Frankly, I personally can't imagine why one would use them at all...
>>>   
>>>       
>> Excellent a joke!
>>
>> (for the humour impaired, talloc_reference was added for a reason. I
>> make heavy use of it, hence I'm the one providing the fix to unite
>> talloc_reference with talloc_free).
>>     
>
> In fact, I am not joking. :-)
>
> talloc_(un)reference turns the neat, simple tree of memory
> allocations into a graph with cycles and whatnot. This is
> the origin of the problems we are currently discussing.
>
> And I really think that this additional complexity is avoidable.
>   
The additional complexity can be managed quite simply (won't someone
please ready my solution instead of just arguing about whether or not
there is a real problem). We can even solve the cycles problem, I have
talked about it, but if no-one will read this solution there's no point
in talking about the solution to the cycles.
> Maybe this is due to the fact that I have up to now mainly worked
> on the samba3 codebase where there is virtually no use of
> talloc_reference, as opposed to samba4 which makes rather heavy
> use of talloc_reference. I myself have never used it and I have
> never felt the need to do so.
>
> And given the problems that this creates, I really cannot see
> why one would not try to avoid using talloc_reference by all
> means (only because of sheer laziness.. ;-).
>   

Of course you can't see why, because as you say you don't use it.

> Sam, please excuse my ignorance, can you give me an example of a
> situation that you could not have solved without talloc_reference?
>   
Isn't the fact that I've debugged the problem, the fact that I've
written the patches AND the test cases AND tried for around 8 months to
have someone pay attention to this enough for you to take me seriously?

Now, rather than have the fix reviewed, I'm to have a critical review of
my code by people who don't use or need to use talloc_reference to see
if I could possibly have worked around this feature that the talloc API
offers?

Why not just look at the fix? I'm using it, I have the benefitd, I'm
trying one more time to give it to Samba because could ALSO solves the
immediate soname bumping issue.

[I predict that someone will now talk about this rather than about the
actual value of the suggested fix]

Sam