Should GC hooks be used to help broken software?

[Faré]

On Sat, Jul 4, 2015 at 8:35 AM, Svante v. Erichsen
<Svante.v.Erichsen at web.de> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> On 2015-07-04 19:30:01+0800, Elias Mårtenson wrote:
>> My question is: Should I use trivial-garbage to create a GC hook for the
>> connection object so that if the user of the library forgets to close the
>> connection, it will get closed eventually once it's GC'ed?
>
> My first impulse is to say “that is what garbage collection is there for”.  It
> needs not matter whether the object resides in C or Lisp land or what kind of
> resource it is; if the system can identify that it is garbage, it should collect
> it.
>
> The alternative would also mean that it is difficult for the system to recover
> from the mistake without restart.
>
> Additionally, the API might benefit from a with-async-connection and a
> with-open-channel macro.
>
It might be a good idea to have a GC hook, but you might want your GC
hook to log and/or count dropped connections, so you can later detect
and fix the underlying issues. Belt and suspenders.

—♯ƒ • François-René ÐVB Rideau •Reflection&Cybernethics• http://fare.tunes.org
It's not "privilege". It's *capital*. It's not forcefully taken away from
others in a negative sum game. It's created, preserved and transmitted in
a positive sum game.