Why should I provide a pointer and not SharedPtr to some poco methods

We are using Poco in our project and we found 3 cases where we are confused by poco and his pointing gesture.

Most of the time, when you call the mathod of the poco class, it takes a Poco :: SharedPtr <> parameter, but sometimes it takes a pointer in the parameter. After taking ownership of the pointer creating SharedPtr <> inside its class.

Someday, we would like to provide a class to retain ownership of it. For example, to prevent it from coming off at the end of each call.

For example, this class uses the poco :: TaskManager class to start a task. But we have to be very careful about this, because the object we created is owned by poco :: TaskManager.

CMyClass()
{

  m_xplTask = new CXplServiceTask(...);

  //task manager take the ownership !! (why ??)
  m_taskManager.start(m_xplTask);
}

~CMyClass()
{
    //do not delete m_xplTask; because owned by Poco::TaskManager ;-(
}

      

        
        
        
      

    

Another example:

We use a CRestRequestHandler named p in the local context to expose it to the HTTPServer. but we have to create it on every call! If we would rather do Poco :: ShaaredPtr on a member, just return it. But if we do it with this pointer, we won't be able to know if this pointer is alive.

Poco::Net::HTTPRequestHandler* CHttpRequestHandlerFactory::createRequestHandler(const Poco::Net::HTTPServerRequest& request)
{
  //do not keep pointers in shared_ptr or somewhere else, because poco take ownership ;-(

  if (boost::istarts_with(request.getURI(), m_webSocketKeyword))
     return new CWebSocketRequestHandler(m_notificationCenter);
  else if (boost::istarts_with(request.getURI(), m_restKeywordBase))
  {
     CRestRequestHandler * p = new CRestRequestHandler(m_restKeywordBase);

     //do some very long init
     std::vector< boost::shared_ptr<web::rest::service::IRestService> >::iterator i;
     for (i = m_restService.begin(); i != m_restService.end(); ++i)
        p->registerRestService(*i);
     p->initialize();

     return p;
  }
  else
  {
     CWebsiteRequestHandler * p = new CWebsiteRequestHandler(m_configDocRoot);
     std::map<std::string, std::string>::iterator i;
     for (i = m_alias.begin(); i != m_alias.end();++i)
        p->configureAlias(i->first, i->second);
     return p;
  }

      

        
        
        
      

    

}

another case refers to the already message TCPServerConnectionFactory on Stack Overflow: Unable to use Poco TCPServer and TCPServerConnectionFactory

Why are some methods always proprietary? Is it not possible to have a signature to provide SharedPtr <> instead? I think there are not many changes in poco lib.

Any explanation?