There should be a way to non-destructively disassociate a native handle from a basic_socket

[acmorrow]

I'm working with a somewhat complex system and trying to re-write one subsystem to use ASIO without rewriting other subsystem, yet. The subsystem under re-write does not open connections: that is handled by a separate connection pooling subsystem. This is no problem when constructing a stream_socket, because of the stream socket constructor that consumes a native_handle_type, so I can just use the descriptor that I get back from the pool subsystem.

However, after the re-written subsystem has completed its activity, it is expected to hand back the still open socket to the pooling subsystem. This requires that I sever the connection between the stream_socket object and the native handle, so that when the stream_socket object is destroyed, the handle remains valid.

I cannot see a way to accomplish this in ASIO as of the ASIO 1-11-0 API. The ability to temporarily and non-destructively associate existing sockets with ASIO types would make it much easier to incrementally integrate ASIO with existing network libraries while migrating fully to ASIO.

Apologies if I have overlooked a mechanism for doing this in the existing code.

[acmorrow]

@chriskohlhoff FYI I'd be happy to write a PR for this feature if you are supportive of it. If not (or, worse, if I've missed some obvious existing way to sever the connection between a basic_socket and the underlying native handle), please let me know so I can start working on a different strategy.

[chriskohlhoff]

This is not supported because it cannot be portably implemented. Specifically, on Windows a socket is associated to an I/O completion port and cannot be disassociated.

If you are only targeting POSIX-based systems then perhaps you can stick the descriptor into a posix::stream_descriptor instead? This class does provide a release() member function.

[acmorrow]

@chriskohlhoff I see... that makes sense. I will need to support Windows, so it looks like I will need to find another approach. I appreciate you taking the time to explain.