KSharedPtr breakage

[Frerich Raabe]

On Sunday 23 October 2005 14:43, David Faure wrote:
> On Sunday 23 October 2005 18:05, Frerich Raabe wrote:
> > On Sunday 23 October 2005 15:39, Frerich Raabe wrote:
> > > On Sunday 23 October 2005 05:52, Hamish Rodda wrote:
> > > > I tried to
> > > > port it over to 100% shared pointers, but encountered a problem with
> > > > covariant returns - KSharedPtr can't be used (in its current form) in
> > > > a covariant return with different class types
> >
> > This is a bit tricky, but looking at what KSycoca* is doing, maybe
> > there's an easy way out. Take KSycocaFactory::findServiceByName:
> >
> >   virtual KServiceType * findServiceTypeByName(const QString &_name);
> >
> > It returns a raw pointer, not a shared one, but doesn't document who's
> > supposed to call delete on the pointee. If we're lucky, the caller is
> > supposed to do so
>
> Not at all, this pointer is only a cast of a KSharedPtr, i.e. a pointer
> that kdelibs will delete all by itself.
>
> The caller is NOT supposed to delete a KServiceType, ever.
>
> A better API for this method would be to return a KServiceType::Ptr, I
> guess.

How about making KSycocaEntry (and all the stuff that inherits it - 
KServiceType, KProtocolInfo et cetera) classes with value semantics, making 
it do all the reference counting internally. So you'd have a 'KServiceType 
KSycocaFactory::findServiceByName( const QString & )' function and so on.

Besides the nice side-effect that value semantics don't even trigger the whole 
'Who owns this thing?' thing, it would solve the problem with covariant 
return types which you get when returning a SharedPtr<Foo> instead of a Foo*. 
Instead of giving a long explanation, I just attached a tiny testcase which 
demonstrates the problem. It works if you define WORKS, it doesn't if you 
don't).

- Frerich

P.S.: I love this KMail feature which reminds you to attach something. :-)

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