# The devel/ruby-ref port

## ruby34-ref-1.0.5 – object reference utilities for ruby

## Description

    ruby-ref provides object references for Ruby as well as some common
    utilities for working with references. Object references are used to
    point to other objects and come in three distinct flavors that interact
    differently with the garbage collector.

    * Ref::StrongReference - This is a plain old pointer to another object.

    * Ref::WeakReference - This is a pointer to another object, but it is
    not seen by the garbage collector and the memory used by the object can
    be reclaimed at any time.

    * Ref::SoftReference - This is similar to a weak reference, but the
    garbage collector is not as eager to reclaim the referenced object.

    All of these classes extend from a common Ref::Reference class and have
    a common interface.

    Weak and soft references are useful when you have instantiated objects
    that you may want to use again but can recreate if necessary. Since the
    garbage collector determines when to reclaim the memory used by the
    objects, you don't need to worry about bloating the Ruby heap.

WWW: https://github.com/bdurand/ref

Categories:
  devel lang/ruby

## Library dependencies

## Build dependencies

- lang/ruby/3.4

## Run dependencies

- lang/ruby/3.4