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.
This makes it possible to implicitly convert a PT of a derived type to a (C)PT of a base type, without needing to first convert it to a regular pointer. This also applies to moves, which are now more efficient due to the lack of need for ref/unref pair even if the pointer type is not exactly the same.
rdb
Sam Edwards
tobspr
David Rose