Interfacing with XPCOM

[Walter Bright]

John Reimer wrote:
> In D (windows) it would look like so (assuming you have done away with 
> the compilers internal detection of COM interfaces):
> 
> extern(C++) interface IUnknown:
> {
>     extern(Windows):
>         int QueryInterface(nsIID* uuid, void **result);
>         int AddRef();
>         int Release();
> }
> 
> I bet it would work fine and would be a good way to avoid the 
> special-cased interfaces providing COM support in D.  Instead we've 
> special-cased for C++, which is, at least, a more general case. ;-)

There is one other problem. COM objects are not collected by the garbage 
collector because they are reference counted. Deriving from IUnknown 
means its a COM object which sets a flag in the ClassInfo, directing the 
garbage collector to not collect it. In fact, COM objects are allocated 
using malloc(). IUnknown.Release() uses free() to deallocate them.