public abstract class Boxed
extends org.freedesktop.bindings.Pointer

Parent class of proxied structures. Java side, these behave like normal Objects, but they are not as rich - they may be missing getters or setters (or both!), for example.

In general, Boxed are short lived. They are commonly used to convey parameters or represent state such as in an Iterator. As such, good programming practise is to not hold on to these long term. Use them and let them go out of scope so they can be reclaimed.

In the underlying GLib library, a GBoxed is an opaque wrapper around a C structure allowing it to be used within GLib's Type system. GBoxed generally have custom copy() and free() functions. Unlike GObjects they are not memory managed via the reference counting mechanism, and so the owner of a GBoxed is responsible to free it. The trick is to figure out whether we are owner of the GBoxed or not...