Add shared_library::release()

[manipuladordedados]

Some plugins are never safe to unload (e.g. if you're using Qt, Qt will start threads that are never joined and register thread-local variables in other threads, and it's unsafe to unload Qt code then). I'd like to use Boost.DLL for its portable API, but right now I need to use code like this to provoke an intentional leak:

auto lib = new dll::shared_library;
// ...

Here's code in the wild making use of this workaround: https://gitlab.com/emilua/qt6/-/blob/23baacf56b79d8355082df97bd1d0c2fa6c64ec1/src/qt_handle.cpp#L25

I'd rather do something like this:

dll::shared_library lib;
// ...
lib.release();

Can we have the release() function for shared_library?

[apolukhin]

shared_library follows the std::shared_ptr design. std::shared_ptr does not have a release() function.

Have you tried sokething like this:

std::vector<shared_library>& no_unload_registry() {
    static std::vector<shared_library> reg;
    return reg;
}

When there's a need to load library that does not unload till the end of program, do no_unload_registry().emplace_back(parameters_for_shared_library)

[manipuladordedados]

shared_library follows the std::shared_ptr design. std::shared_ptr does not have a release() function.

Maybe the solution here should be different then. shared_ptr does allow one to customize the destructor, and you can even use a no-op closure here. What about something similar? Maybe load_mode::dont_unload?