On Wednesday 21 October 2009, Nat Goodspeed wrote:
Igor R wrote:
I guess he meant something like this:
// windows-specific: boost::shared_ptr
ptr(LoadLibrary("mylib.dll"), &FreeLibrary); // now you can bind "ptr" to the slots or anything that needs maylib.dll to be alive. Oh -- so instead of using that shared_ptr for my real function, you're saying I could bind it as an ignored argument to a no-op function.
That's true, and I thank you both for the suggested workaround. I remain hopeful that Frank might introduce a better solution before long. :-)
It seems to me reference-counting usage of the dll and unloading it only when the reference count reaches zero is a good solution. It's the same idea as using shared_ptr to destroy dynamically allocated objects rather than passing out plain old pointers and manually calling delete.