Dispose

Every such RustAutoOpaque object has a dispose() method, which immediately frees the underlying resource (tech details if you are worried: indeed decrease the reference count, so dispose-when-use is no problem). But even if you do not call it, when Dart does garbage collection (GC), the same thing will be automatically triggered.

The dispose method mimics the standard pattern in Flutter - we have dispose for ui.Image, etc.

Should we call dispose manually? This is discussed thoroughly in this thread and this related thread. For full information, please refer to those posts directly. In short, thanks to @dcharkes @dnfield @HosseinYousefi @lrhn @mkustermann (ordered alphabetically), when your underlying Rust objects are huge or takes precious resources (e.g. opens a file), do manual dispose to ensure you release the resource as soon as you do not need them; otherwise, there is usually no worry about manual dispose calls.