Puzzling behaviour of Py_IncRef

[Tony Flury]

I am writing a C extension module for an AVL tree, and I am trying to 
ensure reference counting is done correctly. I was having a problem with 
the reference counting so I worked up this little POC of the problem, 
and I hope someone can explain this.

Extension function :

    static PyObject *_Node_test_ref_count(PyObject *self)
    {
         printf("\nIncrementing ref count for self - just for the hell
    of it\n");
         printf("\n before self has a ref count of %ld\n", Py_REFCNT(self));
         Py_INCREF(self);
         printf("\n after self has a ref count of %ld\n", Py_REFCNT(self));
         fflush(stdout);
         return self;
    }

As you can see this function purely increments the reference count of 
the instance.

/Note: I understand normally this would be the wrong this to do, but 
this is a POC of the issue, not live code. In the live code I am 
attaching a 2nd nodes to each other, and the live code therefore 
increments the ref-count for both objects - so even if the Python code 
deletes it's reference the reference count for the instance should still 
be 1 in order to ensure it doesn't get garbage collected./

This function is exposed as the test_ref method.

This is the test case :

     def test_000_009_test_ref_count(self):
         node = _Node("Hello")
         self.assertEqual(sys.getrefcount(node), 2)
         node.test_ref()
         self.assertEqual(sys.getrefcount(node), 3)

The output of this test case is :

test_000_009_test_ref_count (__main__.TestNode) ...
Incrementing ref count for self - just for the hell of it

  before self has a ref count of 2

  after self has a ref count of 3
FAIL

======================================================================
FAIL: test_000_009_test_ref_count (__main__.TestNode)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
   File 
"/home/tony/Development/python/orderedtree/tests/test_orderedtree.py", 
line 62, in test_000_009_test_ref_count
     self.assertEqual(sys.getrefcount(node), 3)
AssertionError: 2 != 3

So I understand why the first assert will be true - when the 
sys.getrefcount() function is called the ref count is incremented 
temporarily (as a borrowed reference), so there are now two references - 
the 'node' variable, and the borrowed reference in the function call.

We then call the 'test_ref' method, and again that call causes a 
borrowed reference (hence the ref count being 2 initially within the 
method). The 'test_ref' method increments the reference of the instance 
- as you can see from the output we now have a ref count of 3 - (that 
count is the 'node' variable in the test case, the borrowed reference 
due to the method call, and the artificial increment from the 'ref_test' 
method).

When the 'ref_test' method exits I would expect the ref count of the 
instance to now be 2 (one for the 'node' variable, and one as a result 
of the artificial increment increment').

I would therefore expect the 2nd assertEqual in the test case to 
succeed. - in this case the borrowed reference within sys.getfrefcount() 
should cause the count to be 3.

As you see though that 2nd assertEqual fails - suggesting that the 
refcount of 'node' is actually only 1 when the 'test_ref' method exits.

Can someone explain why the 'test_ref' method fails to change the 
refcount of the 'node' instance.