Fulfilling a 6+ year desire, GNOME's GLib library now has a generic memory reference counting API.

Going back to at least 2012 has been interest in GLib having a generic reference counting API and as of today such an interface was added to this important GNOME library. Providing a generic reference counting API should help GLib's support/adoption in bindings for languages providing automatic memory management / garbage collection. GLib is what provides the core object system in GNOME and other important core functionality.

Details on the new API can be found via GitLab with this API that offers reference counting semantics to any memory allocations. This significant addition to the library is merged in Git and will be present in GLib 2.58 stable.