Re: [boost] [Review] Shmem

From: Fred Bertsch (fred.bertsch_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-02-07 14:06:32

I'll be posting a more complete review later on, but I thought I'd
post a few preliminary questions early.

First, there tends to be a create and object member function of a lot
of objects in the library. This forced Ion to create partially
constructed objects with the constructor, but it allows the use of
return values instead of exceptions for error handling. I personally
do not like partially constructed objects, and I do not mind
exceptions that are thrown if there's a serious problem detected. I'm
curious what the rationale was for that decision. Do the create/open
functions fail frequently in typical use cases?

Second, there isn't as much type safety as there could be in a lot of
these classes. For example, shared_message_queue does not have a
template parameter to determine what is stored in the queue. Instead,
its send and receive member functions take void*'s. Is there a good
reason for this? I suppose another process could use the same
shared_message_queue with another type, but I'd really like to see
some type safety within the same process.

-Fred