Possibility to mix composite pattern and curiously recurring template pattern

Question

I have a composite pattern implementation, used for GUI components:

class CObject {
private:

  CObject * m_pParent;  
  CObjectContainer * m_pChildren;

  v         


        

Answer 1

From the snippet alone it is unclear why you need detach() to return a pointer to a delivered type.

To take advantage of detach() returning a delivered type, it needs to be called using a reference to the delivered type anyway. Like this:

CSpecificObject* specific_object = new SpecificObject();
// ...
specific_object->detach()->method_declared_in_specific_object();

But this can be replaced with equivalent that works even if detach is void:

specific_object->detach();
specific_object->method_declared_in_specific_object();

If you have a reference to the base type, you can't take advantage of detach() return type:

CObject* specific_object = new SpecificObject();
//...
// !!! Won't compile:
specific_object->detach()->method_declared_in_specific_object(); 

For this reason it is unclear what are the advantages of the approach you are trying to implement.

A side not is that the duplicate() method is smelly. It breaks when delivered class does not overwrite it, but uses the default implementation from the parent class. It can be a sign that something is wrong with the high level design.