Re: Request

[Fabien Bodard <gambas.fr@xxxxxxxxx>]

Le ven. 3 oct. 2025 à 15:40, Benoît Minisini <
benoit.minisini@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> a écrit :

> Le 03/10/2025 à 14:37, Fabien Bodard a écrit :
> > Hi Benoît,
> >
> > One of the most annoying things when coding with Gambas or any other
> > language is this:
> >
> > gbx3: warning: circular references detected:
> > gbx3: warning:     1 Settings
> >
> > gbx3: warning: 30 allocation(s) non freed.
> >
> > We spend hours trying to find where references are duplicated or looped.
> > Is there really no way to optimize this?
> >
> > Without this difficulty, Gambas would be even better than it was...
> >
> > A way to control the shared scope, like Rust?
> >
> > Or traceability of references at a given point in time?
> >
> > I don't know, but it would be a great help. Because even if I limit
> > direct references, there's always a point where things go wrong.
> >
> > --
> > Fabien Bodard
>
> If you pay attention to avoid any possible linked reference between
> classes, i.e. by never having a variable of class A that contains a
> reference on class B, and the opposite, then it will never happen.
>
> But I admit that if you are not careful, and if you create complex
> circuits (A -> B -> C -> D -> A), with arrays and collections containing
> references, then it's almost impossible to find how the circularity was
> created.
>
> Moreover, the "circular references" message does not mean that there are
> circular references!
>
> It actually means that some objects were not freed at the end of the
> program, after all object references stored in static variables of all
> classes have been released.
>
> So it is either actual circular references, or a reference leak bug in
> the interpreter.
>
> In your exemple, only one Settings object is blocked, so that's strange.
> Unless you store in the Settings object a reference to itself!
>
> Then, is it possible to do better?
>
> I'm not sure, because at the end of the program, when it detects
> non-freed objects, the interpreter has no idea where are these pending
> objects. It just knows how many of them are.
>
> But maybe a tool could be created inside the debugger to detect circular
> references on demand. It would start from all static variables, and then
> will follow references recursively until it finds a loop.
>
> It must be on demand, because once a circular reference is created, it
> may be unreachable at one time. For example, you create A -> B -> C ->
> B. Then you release the reference on B in A, and then you have B -> C ->
> B that becomes unreachable because it is not referenced by anything.
>
> I will think about that...
>

Thank you :-).

I'm sure I will found my error but ... so loooong .


>
> Regards,
>
> --
> Benoît Minisini.
>
>
>

-- 
Fabien Bodard