feature request: support move only types

[Dushistov]

It would be nice to support types with deleted copy constructor/assign operator, for AsyncFuture::Observable and AsyncFuture::Deferred instantation, for example:

struct Foo {
	explicit Foo(std::string s): s_{s} {}
	Foo(const Foo &) = delete;
	Foo &operator=(const Foo &) = delete;
	Foo(Foo &&o): s_{std::move(o.s_)} { }
	Foo &operator=(Foo &&o) {
		s_ = std::move(o.s_);
		return *this;
	}
...
};

[benlau]

Hello @Dushistov,

Do you have any reference material about the usage of this kind of data structure?

[Dushistov]

Hello @benlau,

Do you have any reference material about the usage of this kind of data structure?

The obvious examples are from std c++ library: std::unique_ptr and std::fstream.

I suppose generally these are the types that can not have copy/assigment with good and obvious semantic.

Personaly I wrap C API with C++ classes. And C APIs do not have copy functions, only allocation and deallocation. So my C++ classes all have disabled assigment/copy and only have move constructor and move assigment operators.

Currently my workaround would be creation of std::shared_ptr and moving my objects to/from it while I am using asyncfuture. Since I have many such "move only" classes, it is kind of boring and troublesome, and when I realized that I started to create one more library above asyncfuture, I decided to create an issue.

If it is troublesome to implement real support of move only, then may be usage of QSharedPointer / std::shared_ptr with overload via std::enable_if + !std::is_copy_constructible && std::is_move_constructible would be realy nice.

[Dushistov]

And may be as good start will be:

    void complete(T value)
    {
        deferredFuture->complete(value);
    }

    void complete(QList<T> value) {
        deferredFuture->complete(value);
    }

implementation of perfect forwarding or may be just deferredFuture->complete(std::move(value)), to prevent extra copy.

This should give benefits not only for "move only" classes, but also for common classes like std::vector/std::string and so on.

[benlau]

hi @Dushistov,

Sorry for late reply. I did a test case to validate the behaviour of move only types support by QFuture. Seem that it is not supported by QFuture yet. That is the code:

void Spec::test_move_only_type()
{
    struct MoveOnly {
        explicit MoveOnly(std::string s): s_{s} {}

        MoveOnly(const MoveOnly &) = delete;

        MoveOnly &operator=(const MoveOnly &) = delete;

        MoveOnly(MoveOnly &&o): s_{std::move(o.s_)} { }

        MoveOnly &operator=(MoveOnly &&o) {
            s_ = std::move(o.s_);
            return *this;
        }
        std::string s_;
    };

    QFuture<MoveOnly> future;
    auto t = future.result();
}

The compilation error in the line of future.result()

/Users/benlau/Development/Qt-Full/5.10.0/clang_64/lib/QtCore.framework/Headers/qfuture.h:157: error: call to deleted constructor of 'MoveOnly'
    return d.resultReference(0);
           ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If move only type is not supported by QFuture natively , then I have no method to make it works with AsyncFuture.

However, the suggestion of using std::move in complete should be a good idea. I will handle it.