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  • Thomas Haller's avatar
    shared: add NMRefString · 908fadec
    Thomas Haller authored
    I'd like to refactor libnm's caching. Note that cached D-Bus objects
    have repeated strings all over the place. For example every object will
    have a set of D-Bus interfaces (strings) and properties (strings) and an
    object path (which is referenced by other objects). We can save a lot of
    redundant strings by deduplicating/interning them. Also, by interning
    them, we can compare them using pointer equality.
    
    Add a NMRefString implementation for this.
    
    Maybe an alternative name would be NMInternedString or NMDedupString, because
    this string gets always interned. There is no way to create a NMRefString
    that is not interned. Still, NMRefString name sounds better. It is ref-counted
    after all.
    
    Notes:
    
     - glib has GQuark and g_intern_string(). However, such strings cannot
       be unrefered and are leaked indefinitely. It is thus unsuited for
       anything but a fixed set of well-known strings.
    
     - glib 2.58 adds GRefString, but we cannot use that because we
       currently still use glib 2.40.
       There are some differences:
    
         - GRefString is just a typedef to char. That means, the glib API
           exposes GRefString like regular character strings.
           NMRefString intentionally does that not. This makes it slightly
           less convenient to pass it to API that expects "const char *".
           But it makes it clear to the reader, that an instance is in fact
           a NMRefString, which means it indicates that the string is
           interned and can be referenced without additional copy.
    
         - GRefString can be optionally interned. That means you can
           only use pointer equality for comparing values if you know
           that the GRefString was created with g_ref_string_new_intern().
           So, GRefString looks like a "const char *" pointer and even if
           you know it's a GRefString, you might not know whether it is
           interned. NMRefString is always interned, and you can always
           compare it using pointer equality.
    
      - In the past I already proposed a different implementation for a
        ref-string. That made different choices. For example NMRefString
        then was a typedef to "const char *", it did not support interning
        but deduplication (without a global cache), ref/unref was not
        thread safe (but then there was no global cache so that two threads
        could still use the API independently).
    
    The point is, there are various choices to make. GRefString, the
    previous NMRefString implementation and the one here, all have pros and
    cons. I think for the purpose where I intend NMRefString (dedup and
    efficient comparison), it is a preferable implementation.
    
    Ah, and of course NMRefString is an immutable string, which is a nice
    property.
    908fadec