DeleteLater vs. delete, possibly nested event loops and OS X

RJVB

Hello,

I've gotten in a bit of a discussion when I submitted two KDE review reports for patch that seem to prevent a crash I was seeing in KDevelop, and that's based on http://qt-project.org/forums/viewthread/38406/#162801 .

The latest of the reports is https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/120150

My question is simple: should one use deleteLater to dispose of objects that correspond to a GUI element even when that element is not in use in other threads? Is that a (necessary) precaution on OS X only, or also on other OSes?

SGaist

Hi,

It's generally good practice to let Qt's event loop handle the destruction of widgets. There might be some events still needing to be process (or in this case discarded) You might be deleting a parented widget which would be also destroyed because of it's parent being deleted right after you deleted that widget etc.

Also, you can't use GUI elements in other threads. Only the main thread is available for that. However, you can update a widget through e.g. signals and slots.

Hope it helps

RJVB

As I thought, much like ObjC's retain/release scheme (which is like Qt's reference counting, except that it's also the main mechanism to handle object disposal).