Re: is there a deterministic reference counting management for unmanaged clients of SPOKES

Hi WeiChu,

for a better explanation: we have a (unmanaged) Out of Process COM Server which uses SPOKES in the following manner (like your SpokesSDKCOMSample).

imagine, our COM Server exports a Object called "COurServer" which have two methods "Init" and "Dispose" (pseudocode implementation below)

class COurServer {

  CComPtr<ISessionCOMManager> m_sessMgr;

  Init() {

    CoCreateInstance(CLSID_SessionComManager, NULL,CLSCTX_LOCAL_SERVER, IID_ISessionCOMManager, (LPVOID*)&m_sessMgr)))

    CComObject<SessionManagerEventSync>::CreateInstance(&sessionMgrEventsSink);

    AtlAdvise(m_sessMgr, sessionMgrEventsSink, __uuidof(ISessionCOMManagerEvents), &_pSinkCookie);

    }

  Dispose() {

    AtlUnadvise (m_sessMgr, __uuidof(ISessionCOMManagerEvents), _pSinkCookie);

    m_sessMgr.Release();

    }

};

an arbitrary client uses the following sequence: (pseudocode)

{

  SmartPtr spOurServer = CreateInstance(COurServer);

  spOurServer.Init();

  spOurServer.Dispose();

} // leaving the scope will (Final)Release our COurServer object

A (standard) Out of Process COM Server terminates if no more object are in use.

But the client above can not control this in a deterministic way (through Dispose/AtlUnadvise) because your Server (PlantronicsURE) kept an reference to the EventSink (SessionManagerEventSync) object and therefore the Process which exports/host the COurServer is still alive.

i assume that you release that reference later on so no leak happens. (but this behavior is not deterministic).

what about these ideas:

1. i might implement a component using your IPlugin Interface/architekture so i'm responsible for managing references to our object in a deterministic way.
   But so far you mark the IPlugin Interface/architekture as deprecated right?
2. .Net knows the Dispose pattern, so if you provide an implementation of IDispose which frees all kept references all thing is fine.

Thanks in advance