Hello all Anyone got an opinion on this. I looked in boost, and there doesn't seem to be forwards for this. Suppose I am writing my .h file, instead of including shared_ptr.hpp i could just forward it using the following: namespace boost { template <class T> class smart_ptr<T>; } My concern is compilation time, as im going to do this in 1000+ .h files. If, in the user code, the function returning smart_ptr is not used, this could save some compilation time, but then again is that enough to justify a forward ? Regards Rune