Why do we have disposables anyway?

[daixtrose]

Triggered by #679, I feel inclined to comment that I do not understand why a reactive extensions implementation in C++ requires the notion of a disposable. The RAII principle is there before your nose! Every piece of C++ software I saw in the past 30 years that put an extra layer for lifetime or resource management on top of RAII was doomed to fail.

Can you elaborate on why we must copy a C#-feature here?

[victimsnino]

disposable is actually reactive raii =) you can't just keep real raii object due to it is callbacks
Ok, to prepare better comment with explanation for disposables, could you explain your point of view and preferred solution to understand your initial thoughts =)

[daixtrose]

Everywhere you return a disposable, you could return a handle that, at the end of its lifetime, does the things that are currently done in dispose(). I simply do not want to call dispose()anywhere in C++.

[daixtrose]

OK, does that mean you are not expecting the user to call dispose() at all?

[victimsnino]

Yes. Only if YOU want to dispose disposable right now, for example, to make early unsubscribe of observer or stop scheduled action.

[victimsnino]

Looks like i have to mention it somewhere in docs exactly =)

[daixtrose]

I had hoped to obtain a subscription object when I call subscribe which in its desctructor would unsubscribe.

[victimsnino]

Actually it is incorrect expectation. for example

observable.subscribe(...); 

ooops, it causes immediate unsubscribe! Let's image i'm user and i'm dont care about subscription object: i don't want to do early unsubscribe, just subscribe. It would be missuse in this case..

i can provide raii object to support your case, but it shouldn't be default behavior