Re: [boost] Curiousity question

Subject: Re: [boost] Curiousity question
From: Edward Diener (eldiener_at_[hidden])
Date: 2016-10-13 14:01:40

On 10/13/2016 1:36 PM, Daniela Engert wrote:
> Am 13.10.2016 um 00:58 schrieb Edward Diener:
>
>> You are designing or working on a library, perhaps for Boost, perhaps
>> for fun, and part of the design of the library has some public
>> functionality taking a shared pointer as input. You:
>>
>
>> 2) Use std::shared_ptr
>
> For libraries that are consumed only within our company,
> std::shared_pointer ist the most convenient option. Our baseline
> compiler is vc12 with some older stuff in maintenance mode still on
> vc10, so std::shared_ptr is viable. Typically the pointer type is
> typedef'd in some way for user convenience.
>

Makes perfect sense. It certainly helps when you know exactly in what 
environment the library you create will be used.

>> 4) Use neither, you roll your own shared pointer-like functionality
>
> The last library that I designed also for use by external customers, I
> rolled my own 'handle' type which is completely opaque to users which
> see just a struct with no more than one single uintptr_t member. Under
> the covers it is a boost::intrusive_ptr. The idea is to prevent
> accidental misuse and not to force users taking a dependency on boost.
> The library itself is taking advantage of any boost functionality it
> sees fit.

OK, thanks ! I assume that actual implementation code for your opaque 
type is in the built portion of a non header-only library.

>
> Hope this helps
>   Dani