gcpp

If you subscribe to the unified theory of garbage collection [0] then yes shared_ptr does use garbage collection. See also Herb Sutter [1] (describing a different project, but also mentioning shared_ptr): > Q: "Is this garbage collection?" > Of course, and remember that so is reference counting (e.g., shared_ptr). [0] https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs6120/2019fa/blog/unifie... [1] https://github.com/hsutter/gcpp#q-is-this-garbage-collection

There are definitely fringe edge cases where C++ can do things that Rust simply cannot, currently. I'm thinking of things like Herb Sutter's deferred_heap (https://github.com/hsutter/gcpp) that give you GC-like abstraction. It's pretty cool that this is possible to write in vanilla C++ with decent ergonomics. I tried to make something similar awhile back in Rust and hit a wall in terms of making something that would be pleasant to use. Rust has several on-going experiments with making a nice GC, along with good support for arenas. (If you can use arenas, they're great.)