How to delete an object of a polymorphic class type that has no virtual destructor

Question

I am getting the following error when I try to compile some code from a Third-party SDK.

*Description    Resource    Path    Location    Type
deleting object of polymorphic class type ‘Vendor_sys::VendorCode’ which has non-virtual destructor might cause undefined behaviour [-Werror=delete-non-virtual-dtor]   PnServer.cpp    /PCounter   line 467    C/C++ Problem*

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I do not know if its possible to satisfy this condition with only partial knowledge of the Vendor's SDK, where most of the heavy lifting is done in a dll or library object.

My build environment is Eclipse Juno with gpp.

I searched in Google for the error message and did not find any instances of this error.

So, if I cannot modify the black box part of the vendor code, what are my options?

Here is the code that is failing during the make process:

delete pData->unit;

Answer 1

Bad news, I am afraid. You should not use that class as a base class. Too many constraints and pitfalls. You might get away with it, but why risk it? File a bug report with the library vendor.

If you do not need polymorphic pointers, include an object of that type in your class, and delegate the member functions you wanted to inherit.

class my_class {
private:
    evil_class evil;
public:
    virtual ~my_class() {/* stuff */}
    virtual int member() { return evil.member(); }
};