On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 12:20 PM, Andrey Semashev <andrey.semashev@gmail.com
wrote:
I think you can achieve any behavior you described with the interface Peter suggested, can't you?
// p1 locks lib from being unloaded shared_ptr< foo > p1 = get_symbol< foo >(lib, "foo"); // p2 does not lock lib from being unloaded and is testable weak_ptr< foo > p2 = get_symbol< foo >(lib, "foo"); // p3 does not lock lib from being unloaded and crashes if used after lib is unloaded foo* p3 = get_symbol< foo >(lib, "foo").get();
Personally, I'd prefer get_symbol to return something immediately usable, i.e. shared_ptr. I'd also like to emphasize that it should return a pointer and not a function since the symbol may be data. Just my 2 cents.
I might have misunderstood what Peter suggested: I thought he suggested that get_symbol<> would return a smart pointer (not shared_ptr) that would _internally_ contain a shared_ptr to the plugin and the access to the data.