1) I need the member variables initialized...and if I cant do it in the constructor, then where should I?
Since in the current version you cannot call shared_from_this() in a constructor, you can't initialize your members with an expression that invloves shared_from_this(). Instead, you can set your shared_ptr's in some initializing member function that would be called after the object is constructed: struct B; struct A { A(shared_ptr<B> b) { //... } }; class B : public enable_shared_from_this<B> { shared_ptr<A> a_; public: void init() { a_.reset(new A(shared_from_this())); } }; main() { shared_ptr<B> b(new B); b->init(); } ...also you can wrap initialization in a static constructing function: class B.... { // like in the previous example B() {} public: static shared_ptr<B> create() { shared_ptr<B> result(new B()); result->init(); return result; } }; main() { shared_ptr<B> b(B::create()); }
2) Also, your sample code does not use shared_from_this() ... I would like to learn how to correctly use shared_from_this() because I'll be using it in other places in my code too.
Please, refer to the "Smart Pointer Programming Techniques" section: http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_36_0/libs/smart_ptr/sp_techniques.html#from_...