[swift-evolution] RFC: Proposed rewrite of Unmanaged<T>

[Rainer Brockerhoff]

On 18/12/15 16:46 , swift-evolution-request at swift.org wrote:
> Date: Fri, 18 Dec 2015 11:38:31 -0800
> From: Dave Abrahams <dabrahams at apple.com>
> Subject: Re: [swift-evolution] RFC: Proposed rewrite of Unmanaged<T>
> Message-ID: <E82AADA9-F4A4-4E4E-98C3-6E9A3CEC4D12 at apple.com>
> 
>> > On Dec 17, 2015, at 6:23 PM, T.J. Usiyan <griotspeak at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> > My main point of contention with `.release()` is that it has the *exact* same name as a method from the MRC strategy. Maybe this is a silly point, but this overlap could further complicate teaching how ARC works and in what ways it is based on MRC conventions. 
>> > I am not of the opinion that ARC is fundamentally more difficult to understand than MRC, but I do believe that it takes a very particular kind of faith now that we don't get to manually write the retains and releases. This is completely worth it, in my opinion, but  I want to avoid making it *more* confusing to explain what ARC doing at compile time. 
> Well, unsafeRef.release() is equivalent to 
> 
>   {
>     let x = $0.object
>     CFRelease($0) // if CFRelease() wasn't @unavailable
>     return x
> }(unsafeRef)
> 
> If you let the return value drop on the floor, it ends up being
> exactly equivalent to the method with the exact same name from the
> MRC strategy.  So the correspondence is strong and shouldn’t be a
> problem.  That’s just my opinion, though, and part of the reason
> we’re asking for feedback here is so people steeped in MRC like you
> can argue with me about that :-), so if you find this unconvincing
> please explain why.

OK, guess I qualify as "steeped" there - I still use MRC in all my
shipping apps, although I've tentatively used ARC in small fry like
build-time utilities. (Never got used to GC.)

Anyway, much of my code looks like one of these patterns:

// 1
NSDictionary* dict = [(id)CFCreateSomeCFDictionary() autorelease];
... use dict for some lines, done

// 2
NSArray* array = (NSArray*)CFGetSomeCFArray();
... use array for some lines, done

// 3
NSString* str = (NSString*)CFCreateSomeCFString();
... use str for some lines
[release str];

One thing about my not migrating to ARC is that I find the bridging cast
names opaque - can't memorize them! Same, sadly, was true for the
Umanaged<T> methods.

So I'd say, use `.release` or `.autorelease` if they'd be used in the
same place as above...

-- 
Rainer Brockerhoff  <rainer at brockerhoff.net>
Belo Horizonte, Brazil
"In the affairs of others even fools are wise
In their own business even sages err."
http://brockerhoff.net/blog/