Singleton: How should it be used

Question

Edit: From another question I provided an answer that has links to a lot of questions/answers about singletons: More info about singletons here:

So I have read th

Answer 1

Modern C++ Design by Alexandrescu has a thread-safe, inheritable generic singleton.

For my 2p-worth, I think it's important to have defined lifetimes for your singletons (when it's absolutely necessary to use them). I normally don't let the static get() function instantiate anything, and leave set-up and destruction to some dedicated section of the main application. This helps highlight dependencies between singletons - but, as stressed above, it's best to just avoid them if possible.