a friend to instanciate a base class with private ctor

From:
nguillot <nicolas.guillot@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Sat, 21 May 2011 12:24:23 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID:
<35f55e79-42c5-49ce-b744-fa248e80cf43@c41g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>
Hello.

I'm trying to forbid the instantiation of classes, except through a
function whose role it is.
I'm trying to do that by making the involved classes inherit from a
class whose ctor is private.

Something like that:

template <typename T>
T* create() { return new T(); }

class noninstanciable : protected boost::noncopyable
{
    template <typename T>friend T* create();
    // private ctor
    noninstanciable() {}
};

class MyClass : noninstanciable
{
public:
    MyClass() {}
}

int main()
{
    MyClass * c = make<MyClass>();
}

But it doesn't work because of the private noninstanciable ctor.

So I tried to make make<MyClass> as friend of noninstanciable like
that:

template <typename T>
class noninstanciable : protected boost::noncopyable
{
    friend T* create<T>();
    // private ctor
    noninstanciable() {}
};

class MyClass : noninstanciable<MyClass> { /* ... */ };

But same issue.

Finally I tried to make MyClass as a friend of noninstanciable (but if
I succeeded MyClass would be directly instanciable...) like that:

template <typename T>
class noninstanciable : protected boost::noncopyable
{
    friend typename T; // or also friend T or also friend class T
    // private ctor
    noninstanciable() {}
};

but it doesn't compile.

So 2 questions:

1) do you see a way to achieve what I try?
2) how to make a template argument type of a class a friend of this
class, ie:
template <class TtoBeFriend>
class X
{
    friend X; // or whatelse?
}

Thanks for reply.

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