(this will be the first and last "progress update" message until it comes time to summit for a review to boost) For better or for worse (it seems there's much debate on clone_ptr) I have started on the clone_ptr library and have a working preliminary clone_ptr class. Details can be found at the following URL and I will update the website as my work progresses: http://www.peltkore.net/~alipha/clone_ptr.html If anyone is interested in receiving email updates or would like to collaborate on the project (which could just simply be someone I could bounce ideas off of) email me. To contribute some to the discussion: It has been noted that the Boost.pointer_container library could be used instead of having a container of clone_ptr. However, what if you want to use non-standard containers? Yes, Boost.pointer_container has ptr_*_adapter classes, but they can't be used for containers which don't follow the container requirements set by the C++ standard. Secondly, even if a third party container class follows the container requirements, it is still unnecessary work to create your own pointer container. Consider this generic tree class: http://www.aei.mpg.de/~peekas/tree/ http://www.aei.mpg.de/~peekas/tree/doxygen/html/functions.html There's dozens of functions in the tree class that would have to be wrapped in a ptr_tree class that the boost::ptr_sequence_adapter class doesn't wrap for you. Compare this to: tree<clone_ptr<T> > foo; The clone_ptr solution seems a lot easier. The same argument could be made with boost::graph, etc. Also, I've decided to give clone_ptr clone-on-write semantics instead of clone-on-copy. This should alleviate any concerns about performance when inserting into a std::vector or copying containers (copying clone_ptr would give similar performance to boost::shared_ptr). Kevin Spinar