Re: [Boost-users] boost::serialization throws random exceptions

From: Adrian Grigore (adrian_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-02-03 09:10:54

Robert,

Thanks for your swift reply.

Robert Ramey wrote the following on 2/3/2007 1:30 AM:
> a) catch the archive exceptions and display an error message which
> describes what kind of exception has been thrown.

I did something similar, but it is still a poor workaround. I save data
incrementally and rotate savefile names to make sure the player does not
lose all data, but just the changes since the last increment. Still,
losing all game progress since the last savefile increment is a major
turnoff for most players.

> 
> b) Set your debugger to trap when the exception is thrown
> and look at the source code at that spot.  This should contain
> some extra info about why the library is unable to proceed.

Usually this is indeed helpful, but in this case the boost source code
was too cryptic for me to understand the problem.

> 
> c) Just a while guess - thrown from load binary might suggest
> either the file isn't being opened binary, or the size of data
> being read isn't the same as what's being saved.

I doubt that since there is only one save and one load routine in my
application. If I opened the file as text when saving and as binary when
loading this would always fail. But in my case everything is working
fine most of the time.

> d) Sometimes this can occur when the save/load serialization
> is "out of sync".  that is the save and load are not code
> symetrically.  This might occur due to a program change
> without the use of versioning.  It is sometimes helpful to
> save/load with xml_archive just to double check.  The
> serialization library archives for xml actually check the
> xml tags so that if something is out of sync it is detected
> immediatly.

This happens with the same executable, and I have not changed the format
of the data being saved (i.e. amount and order of variables) so "out of
sync" problems seem very unlikely here.

Thanks,

Adrian Grigore