Hi Roy,

I've been working on TclXML v3.0 and trying to incorporate
some new ideas on document and node management.  In particular,
your request to have implicit document destruction has
been implemented.  However, I'm now at the point where
I just cannot get it to work reliably.

What I have at the moment is this; documents are managed
by TclXML - the libxml2 wrapper (TclXML/libxml2) parses
a document and a Tcl object is stored inside the parser
instance that references the document.  The 'get document'
method may be used to retrieve that object.  There is now
an internal TclDOM command, 'dom::libxml2::adoptdocument',
that takes the document object and layers DOM structures
on top of it.  When TclDOM "adopts" a document it also
creates a Tcl command that has a reference to that
document as its clientData.

The docObj module in TclXML/libxml2 maintains a list of which
Tcl_Obj's have their internal representation referring to
the document.  Every time a Tcl_Obj frees its reference
that object is removed from the list.  When the list becomes
empty, the document is destroyed (ie. implicit destruction).
In other words, the document is reference counted but instead
of a simple count a list is used.  The reason for this is
that if the document id *explicitly* destroyed then all
Tcl_Obj's that reference the document must have their
internal representation invalidated (to avoid inadvertant
core dumps).

Consider the following script:

package require dom::libxml2
set p [xml::parser]

$p parse <Test/> 
# parser instance $p now contains the xmlDoc

set d [$p get document]
# variable $d now also references the xmlDoc

$p free
# parser instance, along with its reference to the
# document, has been destroyed.  However, $d still
# references the document so it remains in memory.

set doc [dom::libxml2::adoptdocument $d]
# $doc also references the object and it is now a Tcl command

$doc cget -implementation
# the new alternative to 'dom::document cget $doc -implementation'
# [1]

dom::serialize $doc
# Should return the original XML text
# [2]

### end of script

That last command *should* succeed but, alas, it fails.
This is because prior to [1] there is a single Tcl_Obj that
references the xmlDoc.  At various times the Tcl_Obj has a
reference count of 2 or 3, corresponding to $p, $d and $doc.
However, at [1] the *internal representation* of the Tcl_Obj
is changed to something else, since the Tcl_Obj has been
used as a command reference.  Now the docObj module is informed
that the internal rep has been freed and it notices that
there are now no references to the xmlDoc to it is destroyed.

The Tcl command at [2] returns the error message "no such document",
because by that time it has been destroyed.

My conclusion is that object shimmering defeats any attempt
to have mutable objects automatically garbage collected.

It is not enough to retain a reference to the Tcl_Obj
to keep the document alive - somehow you must prevent the
internal rep from being changed.  It would seem that the
design of the Tcl object system does not support this.

At this point there is a choice: don't define document node commands
(ie. stay with the v2.x TclDOM API) or require explicit
destruction of documents.  At this stage my preference is for
the latter.

All comments are welcome,
Steve Ball

-- 
Steve Ball            |   XSLT Standard Library   | Training & Seminars
Zveno Pty Ltd         |     Web Tcl Complete      |   XML XSL Schemas
http://www.zveno.com/ |      TclXML TclDOM        | Tcl, Web Development
Steve.Ball@[...].com  +---------------------------+---------------------
Ph. +61 2 6242 4099   |   Mobile (0413) 594 462   | Fax +61 2 6242 4099




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