On 2026-05-27 12:11, Martin Frb via fpc-devel wrote:
I know how refcount internally work on strings and dyn array.
I am thinking about formulating a request to the DWARF specs. So I want
to check the details, and also get information how they
- will work for smart pointers,
- where else they may occur?
Background, refcounts may be of interest for the debugger in at least
the following cases.
- A user modifies a variable (or an indexed value) via the debugger.
~ The debugger may additionally need info, if it should "copy on
write" / though that can be derived....
~ The debugger could inform the user about "side effects on other
references to the value"
.
.
I can't imagine a reasonable scenario when a user might want to perform
a modification of a refcounted variable of the program being debugged by
using "copy on write". I strongly believe that such an option should not
be offered to the user at all. As far as modifying the already existing
instance is concerned, the debugger should probably always check whether
the shared reference is still valid and having the original value at the
time of trying to modify it - trying to add the debugger as another
reference of an existing refcounted variable might IMHO lead to
unexpected/unwanted effects on the program being debugged and thus
should be avoided as well.
Just my 2 cents
Tomas
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