This post originated from an RSS feed registered with .NET Buzz by Jeff Key. Original Post: Whidbey CLR helps with unmanaged resources Feed Title: Jeff Key Feed URL: http://www.asp.net/err404.htm?aspxerrorpath=/jkey/Rss.aspx Feed Description: Topics revolve around .NET and the Windows platform. Latest .NET Buzz Posts Latest .NET Buzz Posts by Jeff Key Latest Posts From Jeff Key

How about that.  Just days after referencing EricGu's blog entry about unmanaged resource references causing pain in .NET v.Now, BradA delivers the goods with some solutions in .NET v.Next.  Joy!

Two things:

• Cheap managed object holding an expensive unmanaged object:.
  Two new methods on GC:  AddMemoryPressure and RemoveMemoryPressure.  These let you give the runtime hints about how much unmanaged gunk you're dealing with so it can alter its collection strategy.
• Handling a limited number of resources:
  The friend you didn't know you had in v1.x, HandleCollector, is making a public appearance.  It's essentially a counting collection that takes hints from you as to when it should have the GC be more aggressive with the frequency of its collections.