[Uml-devel] Re: [Bug 54816] associations not pasted after a copy

[Oliver Kellogg]

Brian Thomas wrote:
>
> 1. Why, this late in the development cycle, are we changing associations
> so heavily.

The motivation is to close out bug 54816.
I know the fix is not really good yet with respect to
leaking memory. OTOH, this is a very minor issue when
compared with the total amount of unfreed memory
at program exit as reported by valgrind (in excess of
one megabyte.)

> 2. Yes, *not* deleting associations is bad. It very much will
> cause a problem
> with code generation as well as other things. [...]

I tried generating code for IDL and Ada and I don't see any
problems. However, as said, if you find specific problems
then please make entries at bugs.kde.org - I am willing
to work on them.

>     Second, in general terms, 
> this is very bad as it will be a source of a memory leak
> (unused associations lying 
> around in memory).

See above, we all know that.
My personal stance is, it's better to have a feature
that leaks some memory than not have the feature.
After all we're talking about a desktop application
and not some safety critical embedded system :)

> So.. why are cut and paste of associations so important vs
> being able to have no
> crashes/memory leak.

Well, cut'n'paste can be quite important in some cases.
As said, I am willing to work through any remaining
stability problems related to this.

>  Surely there is a better way to fix the cut and paste.

I totally agree and am interested in coming to grips with this
in a clean way - without giving up cut/paste, that is.

> If not,
> or the fix wont be simple, then from my point of view, it is
> *far* better to remove cut 
> n paste of associations for the 3.2 release rather than the
> other way around.

I guess here is where we differ.
I have not been experiencing any collateral damage from the
change. But again, this is just my personal usage.

> I'll try to take a more in depth look at the code, and the
> changes made, later today
> and provide feedback/patches as appropriate.

Great.

Oliver