We have a C++ library that we provide to several different clients. Recently we made the switch from using raw pointers in the public interface to using boost::sharedptr instead. This has provided an enormous benefit, as you might guess, in that now the clients no longer have to worry about who needs to delete what and when. When we made the switch I believed it was the right thing to do, but it bothered me that we had to include something from a third-party library in our public interface – generally you avoid that kind of thing if you can. I rationalized it that boost was practically part of the C++ language now, and our use case requires that both the client code and the library hold pointers to the objects. However recently one of our clients has asked us if we could switch to using a neutral smart pointer class in the interface, because our library is essentially forcing them to a particular version of boost- a point which I certainly understand and appreciate. So now I am wondering what the best course of action might be. I have thought about it a little bit, and wondered about creating a simple smart pointer class that simply held a real boost smart pointer. But then the clients would probably immediately stuff one of those into their flavor of boost::sharedptr, and then we’d be three shared pointers deep – which might be a problem, or it might not. Anyway, I’d love to hear some opinions from the community about the best way to solve this problem.
Edit: I originally said transfer of ownership, but I should have specified that code on both sides of the API boundary need to hold a pointer to the object.
shared_ptr<> is part of the language, as of the release of TR1. See: (TR1)