why pr2-controllers use a shared pointer + realtimebox ?

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Hi Guido,

Some uses of boost::shared_ptr are thread safe, but other uses are not.

The documentation for shared pointers describes which operations are thread safe:

A shared_ptr instance can be "read" (accessed using only const operations) simultaneously by multiple threads. Different shared_ptr instances can be "written to" (accessed using mutable operations such as operator= or reset) simultaneosly by multiple threads (even when these instances are copies, and share the same reference count underneath.)

These are the two things you can do with a shared pointer: access it without changing it and modify separate shared pointer instances simultaneously. The realtime box solves a third use case: passing an instance of a shared pointer from one thread to another.

Consider the following scenario. Two threads share a global shared pointer named ptr. Thread A writes to ptr, and thread B reads from it:

=== Thread A

ptr.reset(new Object);

=== Thread B

my_ptr = ptr;

This is not guaranteed to be thread safe because shared pointer assignment is not atomic. The assignment to my_ptr can occur at the same time that thread A is modifying ptr, leading to a corrupted shared pointer.

If you're still doubtful, here is a stackoverflow question with a similar example.