Scott Banachowski <sbanacho <at> yahoo.com> writes:

I agree with Peter here, the destructor for test_unit should be virtual.

'Should' is a strong statement. Do you have anything to based it on?

I find that it is being deleted when test_unit* is a stored in reference counted pointer,

Where?

and at program exit it is being deleted by calling ~test_unit().

Where do I call destructor explicitly?

If you use a derived class (test_suite), this is leading to an error.

Where?

Also, in the code I'm looking at (1.40.0), the test_suite class has a virtual destructor, but its base class test_unit does not. Not making the base class virtual seems to be defeating the purpose.

What purpose? The only reason that test_suite destructor is virtual is because this class in fact is being polymorphically. It has subclass master_test_suite. Gennadiy