This post is 3+ years overdue. I initially put it off for the
lack of a purpose-built tool in the language or the library to
distinguish between normal destruction and finalization (when the
GC is invoked by the destructor). After we got the
`GC.inFinalizer` thing and having made a few stalled attempts to
get the thing written, I finally sat down a couple of weeks ago
and forced myself to finish it.
The result is not what I had originally intended, as the topic
turned out to be much more involved than I had realized. What was
supposed to be one post very quickly became two, and now it looks
like there will be at least four before I'm done. (I didn't even
get to the GC.inFinalizer thing in this first post.) Object
destruction in D has dark corners that I had never knew existed
until recently, and I expect that as I experiment with them and
talk with some battle-hardened warriors like Adam, I'll find
myself with many more words to write on the topic.
The blog:
https://dlang.org/blog/2021/03/04/symphony-of-destruction-structs-classes-and-the-gc-part-one/
Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/lxkcxp/symphony_of_destruction_structs_classes_and_the/
The GC series to date:
https://dlang.org/blog/the-gc-series/
