Allow the id.setter to take value of None

[gonuke]

If the id value passed to the id.setter is None automatically pick the next available ID

[pshriwise]

Just one comment from me but then I think we can merge this in. Thanks @gonuke!

[pshriwise]

Suggested change

[pshriwise]

A few small thoughts/questions from me @gonuke. Thank you for this improvement!

[gonuke]

I moved the ID cleanup to DAGSet.delete() - but should that method also delete the DAGSet object?

[pshriwise]

I moved the ID cleanup to DAGSet.delete() - but should that method also delete the DAGSet object?

Can you elaborate on deleting the DAGSet object?

[gonuke]

I moved the ID cleanup to DAGSet.delete() - but should that method also delete the DAGSet object?

Can you elaborate on deleting the DAGSet object?

As far as I know, the delete() method does not actually act as a destructor. So when we call delete() it acts on the MOAB DB, but there continues to be a DAGSet object on the python side that no longer points to anything on the MOAB side. Should we invoke a destructor on this object as part of delete() (if that's even possible?).

[pshriwise]

As far as I know, the delete() method does not actually act as a destructor. So when we call delete() it acts on the MOAB DB, but there continues to be a DAGSet object on the python side that no longer points to anything on the MOAB side. Should we invoke a destructor on this object as part of delete() (if that's even possible?).

Ah, yeah I don't think it's possible to delete an object inside an object method. My understanding of invoking __del__ (via del) is that it will clean up any resources attached to an object before removing any references to that object in the current scope, meaning that if we call del self inside .delete to invoke the object destructor, a reference to the object will still exist in the scope from which the .delete method was called and the object won't be cleaned up.

It seems the best we can do is invalidate the object and ensure that it fails quickly and gracefully if used beyond the point that delete is called.

[gonuke]

Ah, yeah I don't think it's possible to delete an object inside an object method.

I didn't think so.... but just wonder about what users will expect from the delete() method....

[pshriwise]

I didn't think so.... but just wonder about what users will expect from the delete() method...

We're sort of limited by the language here, I'd say. So the best we can do is probably provide some additional documentation on what happens to the object at that point.... if we had documentation. For now, an expansion of the .delete() docstring would suffice I think.

[gonuke]

I didn't think so.... but just wonder about what users will expect from the delete() method...

We're sort of limited by the language here, I'd say. So the best we can do is probably provide some additional documentation on what happens to the object at that point.... if we had documentation. For now, an expansion of the .delete() docstring would suffice I think.

I was also trying to think about whether delete() could have a better name, but couldn't come up with one.

[pshriwise]

I like where we landed with this for now. Thank you @gonuke!

[pshriwise]

I'll give this a bit in case @paulromano wants to have another look.

[paulromano]

Looks good to me too! Thanks for pinging me on this @pshriwise