I'm pulling my hair due to the following problem: I am following the example given in boost.interprocess documentation to instantiate a fixed-size ring buffer buffer class that I wrote in shared memory. The skeleton constructor for my class is:

template<typename ItemType, class Allocator >
SharedMemoryBuffer<ItemType, Allocator>::SharedMemoryBuffer( unsigned long capacity ){

    m_capacity = capacity;

    // Create the buffer nodes.
    m_start_ptr = this->allocator->allocate();  // allocate first buffer node
    BufferNode* ptr = m_start_ptr;
    for( int i = 0 ; i < this->capacity()-1; i++ ) {
        BufferNode* p = this->allocator->allocate();    // allocate a buffer node
    }
}

My first question: Does this sort of allocation guarantee that the buffer nodes are allocated in contiguous memory locations, i.e. when I try to access the n'th node from address m_start_ptr + n*sizeof(BufferNode) in my Read() method would it work? If not, what's a better way to keep the nodes, creating a linked list?

My test harness is the following:

// Define an STL compatible allocator of ints that allocates from the managed_shared_memory.
// This allocator will allow placing containers in the segment
typedef allocator<int, managed_shared_memory::segment_manager>  ShmemAllocator;

//Alias a vector that uses the previous STL-like allocator so that allocates
//its values from the segment
typedef SharedMemoryBuffer<int, ShmemAllocator> MyBuf;

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) 
{
    shared_memory_object::remove("MySharedMemory");

    //Create a new segment with given name and size
    managed_shared_memory segment(create_only, "MySharedMemory", 65536);

    //Initialize shared memory STL-compatible allocator
    const ShmemAllocator alloc_inst (segment.get_segment_manager());

    //Construct a buffer named "MyBuffer" in shared memory with argument alloc_inst
    MyBuf *pBuf = segment.construct<MyBuf>("MyBuffer")(100, alloc_inst);
}

This gives me all kinds of compilation errors related to templates for the last statement. What am I doing wrong?