[libvirt] [PATCH C#] Always close connections and free domains

[arnaud.champion at devatom.fr]

Hmm, that's what I call a "wrapper" (I don't know if it is the good term)

I have created one for my project DAVIM.
It is almost complete, I have encapsulate IntPtr and all of this in classes.

for example I have class "LibvirtHost" and "LibvirtDomain" and 
"LibvirtNetwork" and so on.
Each object keep his IntPtr and expose smooth methods to use bindings.

I don't know if it can be a start point.

Arnaud

--------------------------------------------------
From: "Matthias Bolte" <matthias.bolte at googlemail.com>
Sent: Friday, October 29, 2010 4:58 PM
To: <veillard at redhat.com>
Cc: <libvir-list at redhat.com>; <arnaud.champion at devatom.fr>
Subject: Re: [libvirt] [PATCH C#] Always close connections and free domains

> 2010/10/28 Daniel Veillard <veillard at redhat.com>:
>> On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 12:37:18PM +0200, Matthias Bolte wrote:
>>> Also free the unmanaged authDataPtr in the virConnectOpenAuth
>>> examples.
>>
>>  I'm no C# expert by all mean ... so I'm not sure I should comment
>
> Same here. I'm basically applied my C++ and Java knowledge onto C# and
> see how far I come with that :)
>
>> [...]
>>>                      }
>>>                      string domainName = Domain.GetName(domainPtr);
>>> +                    Domain.Free(domainPtr);
>>
>>  but that I wonder ... When people are used to GC'ed languages, they
>> hate when they have to do the cleanup themselve and end up with leaks
>> left and right (from experience with libxml2 python bindings...)
>>  Is there really no way to do some kind of automatic garbage collection
>> of Domain objects, or is adding this just a way to speed up the GC in
>> a loop ?
>>
>>  otherwise patch looks 'normal' to my unexercized eye :-)
>>
>> Daniel
>
> Currently the bindings are just a straightforward mapping for the C
> API into C# using static methods and "void" pointers (actually
> IntPtr). This basically works, but probably doesn't feel very C#'ish.
>
> I think we might complete the bindings at this level. Once that basic
> thin layer is done and all the hard problems are solved - like the
> heap issue in the auth callback (has a workaround) or the integer
> width on different platforms problem with the virDomainInfo struct -
> then we can wrap this "first level" bindings into a more C#'ish way
> with instances of the Domain class representing an underlying
> virDomainPtr etc.
>
> At that level we can use the GC and let it collect domain objects. But
> we'll still keep the explicit Free() methods as in the Java bindings,
> because I think that the C# GC - as most/all GC languages - doesn't
> guarantee calling finalizers/destructors at all and we might end up
> with leaked underlying objects. Maybe I'm wrong here, I'm not a C#
> expert after all :)
>
> Matthias