Re: [boost] thread_safe_ptr class interest request

Subject: Re: [boost] thread_safe_ptr class interest request
From: Frank Mori Hess (frank.hess_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-07-28 16:21:26

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On Wednesday 28 July 2010, Philippe Vaucher wrote:
> What's still to be done is worry about ownership of objects, my idea is to
> eventually somewhat model it after boost::shared_ptr that way it's easier
> to pass those around.

In which case you would wind up with something almost exactly like 
poet::monitor_ptr:

http://www.comedi.org/projects/libpoet/boostbook/doc/boostbook/html/poet/monitor_ptr.html

I found the resulting coupling of two orthogonal concepts (automatic locking 
and shared_ownership) to be unsatisfactory however, resulting in the 
generic_ptr library in the boost sandbox (undocumented), which allows 
composition of smart pointer types, plus facilities for writing generic code 
that manipulates pointers or pointer-like classes.

generic_ptr::monitor<T*> m;

would be like your thread_safe_ptr<T> and

generic_ptr::shared<generic_ptr::monitor<T*> > sm;

would be like a shared_ptr with automatic locking.  I'm not trying to 
discourage your efforts however.  I just want to make you aware of this code 
I wrote in case it is useful to you or someone else who wants to take up the 
problem (I don't spend much time on volunteer programming projects these 
days, and probably wont ever get around to trying to get any of this into 
boost).

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