When should I use g_object_unref()

[Freddie (Fred Al)]

@ebassi

says “transfer full” or “newly allocated” or “a new reference”,

This means that, when I see something like:

Returns

The newly created [GtkButton](https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/GtkButton.html) widget.

or

a new [GtkButton](https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/GtkButton.html)

or from properties:

Owner: GtkButton

I need to handle the reference my self.

And if I understand right, if I add it to a container as a child, then I do not need to drop its reference anymore because for the release process takes care the container now?

@StefanSalewski

In C we can increase that counter to reference an object, that is to ensure that it is kept alive and is not destroyed by GTK. When we do not need that object any more we can decrease the reference counter. If the reference counter drops to zero then GTK destroys the object, that is GTK frees its memory and closes related resources.

This means that, if I create a button has a floating point ( somewhere between 0 and 1).
If I add that button to a container ( window in this case) the reference grows to 1 and this happens because the container ( window) own it now.

Am I right?

EDIT:
This code when I click the Button:

#include <gtk/gtk.h>

static void btn_clbk ( GtkButton *button, gpointer data )
{
    ( void ) data;
    g_print ( "ref = %u\n", G_OBJECT ( button )->ref_count );

    g_object_ref ( button );
    g_print ( "ref = %d\n", G_OBJECT ( button )->ref_count );

    g_object_unref ( button );
    g_print ( "ref = %d\n", G_OBJECT ( button )->ref_count );

}

int main ( void )
{
    GtkWidget *window;
    GtkWidget *button;

    gtk_init ( NULL, NULL );

    window = gtk_window_new ( GTK_WINDOW_TOPLEVEL );
    g_signal_connect ( window, "delete-event", gtk_main_quit, NULL );
    g_signal_connect ( window, "destroy",      gtk_main_quit, NULL );

    button = gtk_button_new();
    gtk_container_add( GTK_CONTAINER( window ), button );
    g_signal_connect ( button, "clicked", G_CALLBACK ( btn_clbk ), NULL );

    gtk_widget_show_all ( window );
    gtk_main ();
}

returns:

ref = 8
ref = 9
ref = 8

But I was expected to be:

ref = 1
ref = 2
ref = 1