Apparently tp_connection_hold_handles() and tp_connection_unref_handles() ref and unref a client-side count, only releasing the single Telepathy handle "hold" when that client-side ref reaches 0. If so, the documentation should say so.
I've added some documentation <http://git.collabora.co.uk/?p=telepathy-glib.git;a=commit;h=db5c49716c12c09b294a5531104fab538a438030>, which will be in 0.7.31.
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