Get* Interface Uniformity

[jeremylt]

Ok, we're pretty inconsistent about when a Get interface needs a Restore/Destroy. Here's the list of ones that don't.

I think an easy point of consistency would be to require a Destroy when the Get returns a Ceed* object.

ceed.h

Function	Scalar Quantity	Has Restore
CeedBasisGetQRef	No	No
CeedBasisGetQWeights	No	No
CeedBasisGetInterp	No	No
CeedBasisGetInterp1D	No	No
CeedBasisGetGrad	No	No
CeedBasisGetGrad1D	No	No
CeedBasisGetDiv	No	No
CeedBasisGetCurl	No	No
CeedQFunctionGetFields	No	No
CeedQFunctionContextGetAllFieldLabels	No	No
CeedContextFieldLabelGetDescription	No	No
CeedOperatorGetFields	No	No
CeedOperatorGetFieldByName	No	No
CeedCompositeOperatorGetSubList	No	No
CeedCompositeOperatorGetSubByName	No	No
CeedOperatorFieldGetName	No	No

backend.h

Function	Scalar Quantity	Has Restore
CeedBasisGetCollocatedGrad	No	No
CeedQFunctionContextGetFieldLabel	No	No
CeedOperatorGetQFunctionAssemblyData	No	No
CeedQFunctionAssemblyDataGetObjects	No	No
CeedOperatorAssemblyDataGet*	No	No
CeedOperatorGetFallback	No	No
CeedOperatorGetFallbackParent	No	No

String getters I think are fine (I think they are unlikely to be kept by the user for a long time, and they are constantly, so the user has to mean to bypass that to edit them)

Function	Scalar Quantity	Has Restore
CeedGetResource	No	No
CeedGetErrorMessage	No	No
CeedGetResourceRoot	No	No
CeedGetOperatorFallbackResource	No	No
CeedQFunctionGetKernelName	No	No
CeedQFunctionGetSourcePath	No	No
CeedQFunctionFieldGetName	No	No
CeedQFunctionFieldGetData	No	No

Others I think are fine (Backend use only, intended to be edited, and should not have multiple access at the same time)

Function	Scalar Quantity	Has Restore
Ceed*GetData	No	No

[jeremylt]

@jrwrigh continuing some of our discussions otherwhere.

I think some of these make sense to leave without a Restore, like when we get a const char *? (CeedGetResource for example)

[jrwrigh]

Yeah, if we can reliably enforce a const to be used by the user, then it doesn't need a restore.

Which I guess we could've done with CeedGetJit* by using const * const char *? Or something like that, I'm pretty sure there's a semantic to declare const for nested pointers.

[jedbrown]

Note that returning const pointers does not prevent use after free. I don't think we have a good rule for this in PETSc either. It's vaguely "if the caller might be tempted to hang onto the reference but doing so could produce confusing behavior, then a Restore is needed". So returning an immutable string that would only be compared is okay, as is KSPGetPC. I don't think anyone is happy with this vagueness, but it's kind of a hassle to program with explicit restores everywhere.

[jeremylt]

Yeah, I don't think we want restore for all of those. I'm less worried about the strings because those are typically used for display. I'm also less worried about the ceed/backend.h functions.

I think on the whole taking an approach of refcounting any Ceed, CeedVector, ect from these interfaces and the requiring Ceed*Destroy would make things easier for us and would be a good uniformity step, as it imposes the rule that any Ceed object in scope should be destroyed. (Also would help simplify any odd edges in FFI, especially Rust)