"clear all" problem for classes defined in oct-files (Was: : bug) (Concerns: SWIG)

[John W. Eaton]

On 28-May-2008, Michael Goffioul wrote:

| Another solution for this kind of problem would be to prevent octave from
| unloading an oct-file (this does not mean that the symbol cannot be removed
| from the symbol table, but simply that the shared module is not unmapped
| from the process address space) while there are still variables of classes
| contained in the oct-file. One way to achieve this is to make all such variables
| to hold a reference to their containing oct-file, in the same way
| octave_dld_function class does, by using octave_shlib. With automatic
| referencing, the oct-file would only be unloaded when all functions and all
| variables of a contained class are cleared. I think this would makes
| things cleaner, and it could even be provided in octave by some standard
| mechanism (like an octave_dld_base_value class, from which classes in
| oct-files would inherit).

Isn't this how things currently work?  I think the octave_base_shlib
class manages this properly now, at least in the default branch (I
have no plans to fix a problem like this in the release-3-0-x branch).
But if not, then it would be helpful if someone could submit a simple
test case that demonstrates the problem.

Thanks,

jwe