[ARROW-2052] Unify OwnedRef and ScopedRef

• Type: Task
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Trivial
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 0.8.0
• Fix Version/s: 0.9.0
• Component/s: Python
• Labels: pull-request-available
• External issue URL: https://github.com/apache/arrow/issues/18031
• Assignee: Antoine Pitrou
• Reporter: Antoine Pitrou
• Created: 29/Jan/18 18:22
• Updated: 11/Jan/23 07:18
• Resolved: 02/Feb/18 05:07

Description

Currently OwnedRef and ScopedRef have similar semantics with small differences. Furtheremore, the naming distinction isn't obvious.

I propose to unify them as a single OwnedRef class with the following characteristics:

• doesn't take the GIL automatically
• has a release() method that decrefs the pointer (and sets the internal copy to NULL) before returning it
• has a detach() method that returns the pointer (and sets the internal copy to NULL) without decrefing it

For the rare situations where an OwnedRef may be destroyed with the GIL released, a OwnedRefNoGIL derived class would also be proposed (the naming scheme follows Cython here).

Opinions / comments?

Issue Links

• links to: GitHub Pull Request #1534