Re: [Boost-Users] Re: Any interest in a weak pointer?

From: Peter Dimov (pdimov_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-01-11 09:50:24

From: "terekhov" <terekhov_at_[hidden]>
> > On the other hand placing a memory barrier in shared_ptr will
> probably be a
> > good thing from user point of view;
>
> I think so too, but how about portability...
> also, given rather close to NULL amount of interest
> (wrt the proposal for having portable interface
> specifically for ref.counting) I've observed on c.p.t,
> I am not sure at all... maybe I am missing something
> subtle and the whole idea of a single "RMB" might be
> a BS... I do not know, really.

Perhaps C++ compilers already do the right thing on "delete p", i.e.
synchronize. They need to do that anyway to protect the allocator.

> > but I don't want to make shared_ptr depend on pthreads.
>
> Yeah, pthreads is not a boost library, but other than
> that argument and perhaps some licensing issues wrt LGPL
> nature of pthreads-win32, I do not see why boosters just
> ignore pthreads. It is a standard and it is available on
> almost every platform out there (I mean basic threading
> stuff).

pthreads is fine, it's just that the current smart_ptr.hpp doesn't need
pthreads and I wanted to stay backward compatible.

--
Peter Dimov
Multi Media Ltd.