Bug 4151 – Add weak references to Phobos/druntime

Just that. The Java API documentation may provide a good starting point as to what weak references should be able to do: http://java.sun.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/lang/ref/WeakReference.html Note that finalizers and the "hidden" rt_attach.../detach... functions are highly unsafe and hard to get right. As an example what can go wrong if users try to implement their own weak references, see bug 4150.

Even worse GC lock/unlock aren't parts of a druntime user API so one have to use ugly things like calling addRange/removeRange to ensure the memory will not be collected.

One can use this implementation for now: http://denis-sh.bitbucket.org/unstandard/unstd.memory.weakref.html

A proposal to add library implementation without runtime changes: http://forum.dlang.org/thread/[email protected]

Even in Java Weak references solve about as much problems as they introduce. But a library based solution could indeed come in handy.

THIS ISSUE HAS BEEN MOVED TO GITHUB https://github.com/dlang/phobos/issues/9885 DO NOT COMMENT HERE ANYMORE, NOBODY WILL SEE IT, THIS ISSUE HAS BEEN MOVED TO GITHUB