Is there a way to call the "deleting destructor" of a pure virtual class?

Question

I'm using C++11 and g++4.8 on Ubuntu Trusty.

Consider this snippet

class Parent {
public:
    virtual ~Parent() =  default;
    virtual void f() = 0;
};

class Child: public Parent {
public:
    void f(){}
};

Called using

{
    Child o;
    o.f();
}
{
    Parent * o  = new Child;
    delete o;
}
{
    Child * o  = new Child;
    delete o;
}

I use gcov to generate my code coverage report. It report that the destructor with symbol _ZN6ParentD0Ev is never called, while _ZN6ParentD2Ev is.

Answer Dual emission of constructor symbols and GNU GCC (g++): Why does it generate multiple dtors? reports that _ZN6ParentD0Ev is the deleting constructor.

Is there any case where this "deleting destructor" is called on the Parent class ?

Subsidiary question: if not, is there a way to get the gcov/lcov code coverage tool (used following answer of Detailed guide on using gcov with CMake/CDash?) ignore that symbol in its report ?

Answer 1

You can't have Parent objects, so no. It's a GCC oversight that this needless function is generated. The optimizer really should remove it, as it's unused, but I've found that GCC has problems is that area as well.