Currently, the WeakPointerTo comparison operators compare the raw pointers, but this is not useful as it may cause a false equality if one weak pointer in the comparison is expired and points to memory that has since been reused.
Instead, we can define a comparison based on the control block pointer, which exists since the new weak pointer implementation in 0bb81a43c9. This is implemented in the owner_before method, matching C++11 std::weak_ptr semantics.
I would now recommend deprecating most comparison operators of WeakPointerTo or redefining them to make more sense, ie. comparing equal if they (once) referred to the same object and not if they simply point to the same memory address. This has not yet been done, though code that uses the comparison operators has been fixed in this commit.
Overloads of std::owner_less have been provided for creating a map or set with Weak(Const)PointerTo keys.
I'm not sure why they were ifdeffed out, but they should certainly be available so that it is possible to compare WeakPointerTo in a thread-safe manner.
To access a WeakPointerTo in a thread-safe way, use something like this:
if (auto ptr = weak_ptr.lock()) {
..use ptr as regular PointerTo
}
The new implementation no longer needs a reference to be stored to all weak pointers on the WeakReferenceList; a mere count of weak pointers is sufficient. Therefore, callbacks theoretically no longer require a WeakPointerTo to be constructed.
The WeakPointerTo class is not actually atomic; it could be made so, but I don't believe it's worth it at this time.
rdb
Sam Edwards
tobspr
Chris Brunner
David Rose