[Liblas-devel] Design/architecture questions

[Mateusz Loskot]

On 30/11/10 19:51, Howard Butler wrote:
> On Nov 30, 2010, at 11:55 AM, Mateusz Loskot wrote:
>
>> On 30/11/10 16:57, Howard Butler wrote:
>>> On Nov 30, 2010, at 9:50 AM, Michael Gerlek wrote:
>>>>
>>>> 2. Auto_ptr is used for ReaderImpl and some others.  What is
>>>> the intent here?
>>>
>>> I hope Mateusz can chime in on this one.  I never fully
>>> understood the intent here, but I'm kind of a dolt on these
>>> things.
>>
>> Are you asking why the auto_ptr in particular or why smart pointer
>> at all?
>
> I was asking about auto_ptr in particular.

Just to clarify, in this particular case, there is nothing wrong
with using std::auto_ptr and rather no chance to get trapped
by its dodgy semantic.

> Now I remember that this
> existed before I relented on the Boost dependency.

Yes.

>> My idea was to the make the Reader a ref-counted handle, thus
>> copyable and assignable. Then factory returns this lightweight
>> handle. However, the Reader has become fat, then this idea is more
>> or less blocked.
>>
>> A poor solution could be to employ boost::shared_ptr<Reader>  to
>> provide the ref-counted lightweight object returned from factory
>> and passed around, but I don't like such "handle to handle to body"
>> stack at all, so I've given up.
>
> How much of a diet must liblas::Reader go on?

All data members except the pimpl, the pointer to body,
it is reader/writer implementation.

Best regards,
-- 
Mateusz Loskot, http://mateusz.loskot.net
Charter Member of OSGeo, http://osgeo.org
Member of ACCU, http://accu.org