To expand on the answer by bradtgmurray, you may want to make one exception to the pure virtual method list of your interface by adding a virtual destructor. This allows you to pass pointer ownership to another party without exposing the concrete derived class. The destructor doesn't have to do anything, because the interface doesn't have any concrete members. It might seem contradictory to define a function as both virtual and inline, but trust me - it isn't.
class IDemo
{
public:
virtual ~IDemo() {}
virtual void OverrideMe() = 0;
};
class Parent
{
public:
virtual ~Parent();
};
class Child : public Parent, public IDemo
{
public:
virtual void OverrideMe()
{
//do stuff
}
};
You don't have to include a body for the virtual destructor - it turns out some compilers have trouble optimizing an empty destructor and you're better off using the default.
Virtual destructors are useful when you might potentially delete an instance of a derived class through a pointer to base class:
class Base
{
// some virtual methods
};
class Derived : public Base
{
~Derived()
{
// Do some important cleanup
}
};
Here, you'll notice that I didn't declare Base's destructor to be virtual. Now, let's have a look at the following snippet:
Base *b = new Derived();
// use b
delete b; // Here's the problem!
Since Base's destructor is not virtual and b is a Base* pointing to a Derived object, delete b has undefined behaviour:
[In delete b], if the static type of the
object to be deleted is different from its dynamic type, the static
type shall be a base class of the dynamic type of the object to be
deleted and the static type shall have a virtual destructor or the
behavior is undefined.
In most implementations, the call to the destructor will be resolved like any non-virtual code, meaning that the destructor of the base class will be called but not the one of the derived class, resulting in a resources leak.
To sum up, always make base classes' destructors virtual when they're meant to be manipulated polymorphically.
If you want to prevent the deletion of an instance through a base class pointer, you can make the base class destructor protected and nonvirtual; by doing so, the compiler won't let you call delete on a base class pointer.
You can learn more about virtuality and virtual base class destructor in this article from Herb Sutter.
Best Answer
When writing a C++ class, it's appropriate to think about whether it's going to be
A Value Type
Copy by value, identity is never important. It's appropriate for it to be a key in a std::map. Example, a "string" class, or a "date" class, or a "complex number" class. To "copy" instances of such a class makes sense.
An Entity type
Identity is important. Always passed by reference, never by "value". Often, doesn't make sense to "copy" instances of the class at all. When it does make sense, a polymorphic "Clone" method is usually more appropriate. Examples: A Socket class, a Database class, a "policy" class, anything that would be a "closure" in a functional language.
Both pImpl and pure abstract base class are techniques to reduce compile time dependencies.
However, I only ever use pImpl to implement Value types (type 1), and only sometimes when I really want to minimize coupling and compile-time dependencies. Often, it's not worth the bother. As you rightly point out, there's more syntactic overhead because you have to write forwarding methods for all of the public methods. For type 2 classes, I always use a pure abstract base class with associated factory method(s).