A factory of non-pointer types? I'm confused - the example you describe appears to create the objects on the heap, thus pointers are involved somewhere. As soon as you right myns::myclass&, you are basically using a pointer. Could you try and describe your use cases a little bit more clearly, and also take a look at the Extension documentation at http://boost-extension.redshoelace.com/docs/boost/extension/index.html? Let me apologize for the still incomplete reflection documentation. Jeremy Pack __________
There is a way to use value-based types (with non-pointers) even from shared libraries. I think you didn't read the paper I linked. It's ok to have factories with types which are pointers to base classes. But I'd like to be able to use a factories to register types with no pointer in its creation so that I can use non-pointer factories with my own non-intrusive interfaces. I know it sounds weird. If you want to understand why I want this, take a look at the paper I linked and these ones: run-time concepts: http://www.emarcus.org/papers/oops2008-marcus.pdf mixing objects and generic programming: http://www.emarcus.org/papers/MPOOL2007-marcus.pdf Pseudo-code. With this technique your examples could become (but they don't need to): //This is the object that takes the role of interface class any_animal { void get_name(); ... }; factory <any_animal, int> ... //This factory should be of non-pointers //Note: no inheritance. class dog { void get_name(); }; class cat { void get_name(); } Now I could use it like this: //Dog is contained inside this object any_animal a = create("dog"); any_animal b = create("cat"); //Calls dog::get_name a.get_name(); //Calls cat::get_name b.get_name(); This way I can adapt external code to be used with my library (no need an animal to inherit from anywhere, just implement the functions). I want to use boost.extensions and boost.reflection, but I need a way to create value-based factories so that I can enable non-intrusive interface classes like the one above. It's the only thing I need. With the example above the castings go away. The class any_animal holds the real objects (dog, cat...) and is used as an interface with value-based types. And you can use naturally these types with stl algorithms. It's similar to what boost.function does with any kind of callable type. _____________________________________
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