Central dock area pointer invalid after restoreState() Version:4.5

[XHY-ChuJian]

Description:

Hi, I found that after calling CDockManager::restoreState(), my pointer to the central dock area becomes invalid. Here’s a minimal example:

// Create central dock area
auto* dock = m_DockManager->createDockWidget("WelcomePage");
dock->setWidget(new QLabel("Welcome"));
m_CenterArea = m_DockManager->setCentralWidget(dock);

// Later, restore previous layout
m_DockManager->restoreState(savedState);

// After this, m_CenterArea is invalid
m_DockManager->addDockWidgetTabToArea(newDock, m_CenterArea); // may crash

// Workaround: reset central area pointer
m_CenterArea = m_DockManager->centralWidgetArea();
m_DockManager->addDockWidgetTabToArea(newDock, m_CenterArea); // works

Question:

Is it expected that restoreState() destroys and recreates the internal dock areas?
Is re-fetching the central area using centralWidgetArea() the intended way to recover it after restoring the layout?

Thanks!