__del__ not called ?

[Stef Mientki]

hello,

I've a class, derived from object,
that consists of several graphical objects,
and some interface with an external program.
Now I have to kill the external program when my program finishes.
And example of the object is given below.

In the standalone application, where the class instance was dropped 
straight on a miniframe,
I already discovered that closing the miniframe, didn't always generate 
an onclose event,
so I found out that in this case the __del__ function worked always 
correctly.

Now if I hang this class instance in my larger program,
where all instances are generated dynamically and
are placed on an AUI-panel (alone of together with other objects),
the __del__ function is never called.

Why is the __del__ function not called ?
Is there a more reliable solution ?

thanks,
Stef

class AD_Converter ( object ) :
    def __init__ ( self,  Dock )    # the frame/panel/... where we can put
       self.Button_Start = wx.Button ( Dock, -1)
       self.Button_Start.Bind ( wx.EVT_BUTTON, self.OnStart, 
self.Button_Start )
 
    def OnStart ( self, event ) :
        .. if external program not yet exists, launch it
        .. if external program is running, stop it (don't kill it)
        .. else start it (again)

    def __del__ ( self ) :
        .. if external program exists, kill it