It was intended to make the API easier to use, but various automatic garbage collection all had flaws, and making the application periodically clean up temporary memory added cognitive load to using the API, and in many cases was it was difficult to restructure threaded code to handle this.
So, we're largely going back to the original system, where the API returns allocated results and you free them.
In addition, to solve the problems we originally wanted temporary memory for:
* Short strings with a finite count, like device names, get stored in a per-thread string pool.
* Events continue to use temporary memory internally, which is cleaned up on the next event processing cycle.
This declares that any `const char *` returned from SDL is owned by SDL, and
promises to be valid _at least_ until the next time the event queue runs, or
SDL_Quit() is called, even if the thing that owns the string gets destroyed
or changed before then.
This is noted in the headers as "the SDL_GetStringRule", so this will both be
greppable to find a detailed explaination in docs/README-strings.md and
wikiheaders will automatically turn it into a link we can point at the
appropriate documentation.
Fixes#9902.
(and several FIXMEs, both known and yet-undocumented.)
Sam Lantinga