463337 - Implement nsAutoPtr/nsRefPtr in terms of classes from nsAutoRef.h

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: XPCOM, defect)

Description

[Karl Tomlinson (:karlt)]

Now that we have nsAutoRef<T> and nsCountedRef<T> it may be an option to
implement nsAutoPtr<T> and nsRefPtr<T> in terms of the former classes or at
least nsAutoRefBase<T>, which may reduce the amount of code in nsAutoPtr.h a
little.

The fundamental difference between the classes in nsAutoRef.h and nsAutoPtr.h
is that clients of nsAutoRef.h must provide specializations for the particular
resource, while the clients of nsAutoPtr.h do not because nsAutoPtr<T> is
always deleted with |delete| and nsRefPtr is always managed with T::AddRef()
and T::Release(). 

Perhaps nsAutoPtr.h could use nsAutoRef.h and provide the necessary
specializations of nsAutoRefTraits< Y<T> >, where Y are classes internal to
nsAutoPtr.h, but I'm not certain about compiler support for partial
specialization.

(This bug is filed based on bug 461087 comment 5 and subsequent comments.)

Comment 1

[Andrew McCreight [:mccr8]]

I'm pretty sure we don't want to do this. Any effort on these classes should probably be spent on removing them (like bug 1055035).