Re: [boost] Re: what happened to allocators in boost?

From: E. Gladyshev (egladysh_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-08-28 17:43:43

--- Douglas Gregor <gregod_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> On Thursday 28 August 2003 04:40 pm, Gregory Colvin wrote:
> > I also have no objection, and much sympathy, for having a clear
> > memory management policy for Boost libraries.  But again, it is a
> > matter of people who care about and understand the issue doing the
> > necessary work, just like everything else here at Boost.
> 
> Moreover, it's not a matter of convincing certain people that a clear memory 
> management policy should be adopted by Boost and handed down for developers 
> to do the work. Boost doesn't work that way. Policies always come from the 
> bottom up: someone has a problem, so they fix it in the libraries that matter 
> most to them. With that knowledge of _how_ to fix the problem correctly, they 
> can approach other developers and say "hey, I think we should fix this 
> problem in library X; here's how we did it in library Y". Eventually, most of 
> the libraries will support it, and _then_ we can approve it as a Boost 
> "policy" so that future libraries will follow it.
> 
> The most productive thing we could do right now would be to end this policy 
> discussion. Start with smart_ptr and address *specific* documentation and 
> *specific* implementation problems in this library, with resolutions specific 
> to that library. Is there a library that does it well? Reference that library 
> and state why it does it well, so that others may follow.

I agree but there is a problem.
It is very easy to put an STL allocator in the shared_ptr constructor.
However I don't think that you'll be able to say
"hey, I think we should fix this problem in library X; here's how we did it in library Y"

The question is should we try to find a solution that can work
for other libraries so that we could say "hey,..."?
Do the library authors have some ideas?

Eugene

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