Re: [GD-General] Compile times

[Jesse J. <jes...@mi...>]

At 5:58 PM +0100 12/16/02, Ignacio Casta=F1o wrote:
>Jesse Jones wrote:
>>  I have some thoughts on how this can be done, but I'd like to hear
>>  some more details on how you've implemented this. :-)
>
>Well, that was mentioned some time ago in the Algorithm mailing list by Tom
>Forsyth, I think... However, I saw that for the first time in the fmod soun=
d
>library to handle channel references.

Thanks for the summary. How is this better than simply ref counting 
objects though?

>I don't think that handles are the solution to all the problems and that
>smart pointers are bad. However, I think that there are many ways of using
>smart pointers wrong, while the handle method is simple and errors are easy
>to catch.

Well, this is a separate issue: you don't have to use a smart pointer 
if you ref count your objects. It just makes the code clearer and 
eliminates a source of errors since the ref counting is automated.

Having said the smart pointers are normally very simple. As a rule 
they don't use any template meta-programming wackiness and they 
contain very little code (look at the boost smart pointer 
implementations for example). It's hard to go wrong if you have a 
solid understanding of how constructors and assignment operators work.

   -- Jesse