On 06/21/2011 09:53 AM, Matthias Bolte wrote:
> [1]
http://libvirt.org/html/libvirt-libvirt.html#virConnectClose
>
In contrast to the documentation virConnectClose returns the remaining
reference count of the connection after unref'ing it. This means
virConnectClose returns -1 on error and returns 0 when there is no
reference left and the connection is really closed. When it returns >
0 then the connection isn't closed yet, but is kept open because there
are still objects alive that depend on it. For example when you open a
connection and get a virDomainPtr from it then the refcount of the
connection is increased, because the domain object depends on it. When
the domain object is freed then the refcount of the connection is
decreased again.
All objects in libvirt like connections, domains, networks etc are
reference counted. But in contrast to virConnectClose other free
functions like virDomainFree don't return the remaining reference
count, they really just return -1 or 0. So the question is: do we
change virConnectClose to really just return -1 or 0, or do we update
the documentation, because someone might depend on virConnectClose
allowing to detect via its return value whether the connection was
really closed or not.
At this point, I worry that changing return values might break existing
code, so I would favor a documentation update, but I'd also like to hear
an opinion from DV or danpb.
--
Eric Blake eblake(a)redhat.com +1-801-349-2682
Libvirt virtualization library
http://libvirt.org