[boost] reflection for smart_ptr cycles? (was Re: GUI Library Proposal for a Proposal

From: Larry Evans (cppljevans_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-11-11 14:42:27

On 11/10/2004 07:52 PM, David Abrahams wrote:
> "George van den Driessche" <grebe_at_[hidden]> writes:
>>
[snip]
>>(a) Reflect C++ types into C++ objects. Each type for which you provide a
>>reflection map will correspond to exactly one property_set object, which
>>would contain a set of property_type_info objects.
[snip]
>(e) Serialise the types, using results of (a).
[snip]
> order to do serialization in that way, you'd likely have to expose an
> object's guts: its implementation details.

If you could "reflect" all the reference counted smart_ptrs, like
shared_ptr, for a class, T, into some class specific structure, say
gc_desc<T>, then you could use this for precise garbage collection,
AFAICT.  Although it does expose the guts (after all, shared_ptr<X>,
might be private in T), this is what you'd need to detect cycles.

Does this seem a reasonable additional use for (a)?