C Memory

[Mike Parker]

I should expand a bit. The heart of the issue in this case is 
that you need precise control over the order of deallocation: 
resource allocated through the shared libraries need to be 
deallocated before the libraries are unloaded. Even without the 
static module destructors, you can't rely on normal destructors 
to do that.

I could just entirely skip unloading the libraries. The OS should 
handle that automatically when the process exits, meaning the GC 
should have done its final shutdown by then. I've thought about 
implementing such a change before, as this issue keeps cropping 
up around Derelict because so many people start out relying on 
D's destructors to release memory for them. Then again, the up 
side is that it highlights one of the issues of relying on 
destructors for this sort of thing. Another being that your 
SDL_Surface might never be deallocated at all until the app exits 
if you only rely on destructors, which could have a negative 
impact in a long running game. And yet another being that the GC 
doesn't know about the memory your SDL_Surface points to and 
could happily destruct your object, thereby freeing the surcface, 
while another pointer to it exists somewhere else in the program. 
Better just to use a terminate chain.