Back when we still used boost::*_ptr, we just hacked boost to do this. It required about a half dozen or so mods to the boost headers, and we could turn it on and off for different types, as needed.

Now that we use std::*_ptr it's not quite so trivial to do since we do not vendor the C++ stdlib, but for those of using open source, this is still possible.

I think it offers more flexibility than the approach described in TFA.