From: Michal Suchanek <hramrach@...>
Date: 2007-12-23T04:07:42+09:00
Subject: Re: First stab at a weakref test suite

On 22/12/2007, Daniel Berger <djberg96@gmail.com> wrote:

> I took a look at the Python weakref test suite. I quickly realized
> that it appeared to be a richer interface. Maybe that's part of the
> problem - the interface we have isn't testable. Take a look here:
>
> http://www.python.org/doc/2.4/lib/module-weakref.html
>
> Then again, maybe I'm way off base. Anyway, I think we should at least
> take a look at it and see if we want to steal any ideas from it. The
> corresponding test file is test_weakref.py, btw.

Apparently the reason the python weakref is testable is that you can
explicitly delete an object. At least that's what the test code seems
to do. This is not possible in ruby, and the ruby gc is not
deterministic enough to always free all unused objects. So it's not
the weakref what would need changing to make weakref testable but the
memory allocation (and especially deallocation) interface.

Thanks

Michal