Re: [boost] Loki SmartPtr study: Policy orthogonality issues

From: David Abrahams (david.abrahams_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-01-04 17:05:06

----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrei Alexandrescu" <andrewalex_at_[hidden]>

> My second point was that a design with orthogonal policies is simplest and
> should be strived for. If SmartPtr needs interacting policies, there has
to
> be a strong practical argument in favor of that. Until now, the current
> design of SmartPtr has proven considerably flexible - there's no smart
> pointer implementation that me or other users needed that couldn't be
> implemented within the existing framework.

The use of orthogonal policies certainly has a conceptual cleanliness which
I favor. On the other hand, breaking things up into tiny pieces also gives
users more details to worry about, so it isn't clear to me which approach is
actually simplest for users.

-Dave