Thinking about this some more, I believe that Anurag's finalizer proxy idea is on the right track. It provides the "trick" needed to break the deadly embrace when the ref count of the python object is down to 1, that is, down to when the only reference is the one from the Java parent wrapper.
When the finalizer proxy's refcount goes to zero, it is safe to assume that only Java _may_ still be needing the object. This is enough then to replace the strong global reference to the Java parent wrapper with a weak global reference thereby breaking the deadly embrace and letting Java garbage collect it when its time has come. When that time comes, the finalize() method on it is normally called by the Java garbage collector and the python ref count to the Python extension instance is brought to zero and the object is finally freed.
This assumes, of course, that when such an extension object is instantiated, the finalizer proxy is actually returned.
I should be able to implement this in C/C++ so that the performance hit is minimal and in a way that is transparent to PyLucene users.
More on this in the next few days.... Andi.. _______________________________________________ pylucene-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.osafoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/pylucene-dev
