Manually incrementing and decrementing a boost::shared_ptr?

Question

Is there a way to manually increment and decrement the count of a shared_ptr in C++?

The problem that I am trying to solve is as follows. I am writing a library in C

Answer 1

Maybe you are using boost::shared_ptr accross DLL boundaries, what won't work properly. In this case boost::intrusive_ptr might help you out. This is a common case of misuse of shared_ptr people try to work around with dirty hacks... Maybe I am wrong in your case but there should be no good reason to do what you try to do ;-)

ADDED 07/2010: The issues seem to come more from DLL loading/unloading than from the shared_ptr itself. Even the boost rationale doesn't tell much about the cases when boost::intrusive_ptr should be preferred over shared_ptr. I switched to .NET development and didn't follow the details of TR1 regarding this topic, so beware this answer might not be valid anymore now...