Will therefore GDB utilize C++ or not?

[Tom Tromey]

>>>>> "Paul" ==   <Paul_Koning@Dell.com> writes:

Tom> We'd use RAII to ensure that refcounts were automatically managed
Tom> by the C++ compiler.

Paul> That would be nice if the Python ABI is compatible with this.  It may
Paul> not be, or not always.  For example, when some calls steal a reference
Paul> while others (most of them) don't, and some return a borrowed
Paul> reference while others return a new one, it isn't clear how a
Paul> mechanical scheme like RAII will give you a full answer.

I think you can write wrapper functions which abstract the details.
We'd want this anyway so we can turn Python exceptions into C++
exceptions.

boost::python basically does all this already, but I've been assuming
we'd roll our own.

Paul> Maybe if you use only the subset that does reference counting in
Paul> the one way you want it done?  There would be some performance
Paul> impact but probably not much.

I think the wrappers would be pretty thin, and there'd be no runtime hit
to speak of.

Tom