Ok I&#39;ve spent a good chunk of my day making a set of custom archive class, based on the portable_binary_iarchive and portable_binary_oarchive.<br><br><br>I have a non-virtual class hierarchy named Asset, in memory this is a cyclic graph, but my requirements are that this structure cannot be serialized all at once, it has to be broken up at boundaries.&nbsp;&nbsp; So the archiver serializes the first Asset* (which is always the root object passed into operator&amp;).&nbsp; This object serializes as normally as per the boost serialization code, except except that when subsequent Asset*&#39;s are encountered I send the pointer into an AssetManager class and translate the Asset* into a ResourceID, and serialize the ResourceID instead of the object.&nbsp; This is done by directly calling operator&amp; inside save_override.
<br><br>So far all of this works:<br><br>The reverse case of loading, by hooking load_override almost works.&nbsp; Almost, because I have to apply a hack of skipping 4 bytes inside load_override, before trying to read the ResourceID structure with operator&amp;.&nbsp;&nbsp; I can&#39;t figure out how to make it &#39;proper&#39;, without simply hard coding the 4 byte read.&nbsp; As far as I can tell before save_override some bookkeeping information is written, but the reverse operation in load_override has not yet stripped this bookkeeping information from the stream, so these functions aren&#39;t quite mirror operations.&nbsp;&nbsp; As best as I can tell the function guilty of reading the bookkeeping information is load_pointer.&nbsp; What I need is another function in the boost archive API that pulls the bookkeeping information out of the stream safely, that I can call from within load_override, since I have no intention of calling load_pointer through any means.
<br><br>Aside from the hack, it technically works, but even then I still have a few aching problems:<br><br><br>I also have to hard-code the full list of derived Asset types and manually provide specializations for all of them in save_override and load_override.&nbsp; If I use the base class, I end up slicing my class down to its base, and cannot serialize it.&nbsp; I can&#39;t make serialize virtual, since the intrusive serialize methods are templates, but it certainly would solve the problem if it were possible.&nbsp; In addition the bodies of all of my overrides are completely identical except for the classname (AssetModel, AssetTexture, etc).&nbsp; Which means I&#39;ll be wrapping the bodies of a generic save_override and load_override in a macro, and have to manually add all Asset derived classes to a list of classes inside my archive class.&nbsp; Which means that my archiver cannot be generic, even though I have managed to make it a template in the sense that the passed in asset manager and base asset types are template parameters.
<br><br><br>the type ResourceID&nbsp; is a std::string <br><br><br>saving...<br>class asset_oarchive : ...<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; void save_override(const AssetModel&amp; t, int i)<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; {<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; if (!RootAssetSaved)<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; {<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; RootAssetSaved = true;
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; binary_oarchive_impl::save_override(t, i);<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; }<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; else<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; {<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; AssetManagerType::ResourceID ResourceId = TheAssetManager-&gt;ResourceIdForAsset(&amp;t);<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; operator&amp;(ResourceId);
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; }<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; }<br><br><br>loading ...<br>class asset_iarchive : ...<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; void load_override(AssetModel*&amp; t, int i)<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; {<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; if (!RootAssetLoaded)<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; {<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; RootAssetLoaded = true;
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; binary_iarchive_impl::load_override(t, i);<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; }<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; else<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; {<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; unsigned char c[10];<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; for (INT x=0; x&lt;10; ++x)<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; {<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; c[x] = 0xFF;
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; }<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; for (INT x=0; x&lt;4; ++x)<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; {<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; operator&amp;(c[x]);&nbsp;&nbsp;  //hackhack<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; }<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; AssetManagerType::ResourceID ResourceId;<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; operator&amp;(ResourceId);
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; AssetType* a = TheAssetManager-&gt;FindAsset(ResourceId);<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; if (!a)<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; {<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; a = TheAssetManager-&gt;LoadAsset(ResourceId);<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; }<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; // TODO: throw on missing resources, potentially query asset manager for substitutes
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; t = static_cast&lt;AssetModel*&gt;(a);<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; }<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; }<br><br><br><br>So I have a working implementation, how do I make it better? <br>