Hi Giovanni, --- "Giovanni P. Deretta" <gpderetta@gmail.com> wrote:
Would work but not as you think: the pointed object is not an asio asio::*_socket, but a set of object pointed to from the private members of asio::*_socket: a pointer to the demuxer, a "pointer" to the device (the file descriptor), a pointer to an SSL_CTX, a pointer to the buffer etc. If you look at most asio sockets, they are nothing more than that (that or I'm really wrong here!! :) ).
That may be the case now (i.e. 0.3.6) but it may not be the case in the future. I certainly can't say it will be the case for all new stream layers. Possible non-pointer state that I'm thinking of adding to a socket includes: - a flag indicating whether the socket is blocking or not - flags indicating readiness for read/write for use with level-trigged demultiplexing - the protocol object used to open the socket (maybe as part of adding dual IPv4/IPv6 support) <snip>
So to make copyable_ptr a separate lib, it would need formidable introspection powers to 'see' inside a asio::*_socket or each asio::*_socket should in some way (via trait classes) 'explain' its state. Because of this tight coupling i think that *if* such a class is really needed it should be part of asio.
I was thinking the "introspection" would just be that the traits classes would be specialised inside asio. But yeah, I don't see sufficient reason at this time to add something like this over just using shared_ptr<> on whatever it is that needs reference counting (which may not be a socket anyway).
BTW, when do you plan to release next version of asio?
I want to get the IPv6 support finished first so that I can get comments on it. Probably a couple of weeks away at least. Cheers, Chris