[webkit-dev] Stop Using Raw Pointers & References in New Code

[Michael Catanzaro]

On Tue, Jan 24 2023 at 02:53:42 PM -0600, Michael Catanzaro 
<mcatanzaro at redhat.com> wrote:
> E.g. for GObjects, we could write GWeakPtr, but this would not be 
> very ergonomic, and it won't work for arbitrary types.

So Carlos Garcia added this in https://commits.webkit.org/259482@main.

There is a downside to GWeakPtr: global locking. Even though GWeakPtr 
is not threadsafe and each GObject keeps its own list of weak 
locations, all GObjects nonetheless share the same global lock for weak 
pointer locations. There is probably a relatively high cost compared to 
WTF::WeakPtr, so I'd say it should be used only when it provides 
valuable safety (e.g. in member variables) rather than spammed (e.g. in 
local variables).

Michael