Re: [boost] Serialization Review Results

From: Peter Dimov (pdimov_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-12-10 08:20:04

From: "David Abrahams" <dave_at_[hidden]>
[...]
>    * Is it important to allow all UDTs to be separately versioned?

Yes, IMO.

>      Every time I have implemented serialization and started with such
>      a system, I eventually dropped it in favor of a whole-archive
>      version number.

FWIW, I just went from a per-archive to per-class versioning. Per-archive
versioning works well for projects where you control the classes being
serialized. When you mix third-party classes lib1::X and lib2::Y, getting
the two libraries to agree on a common versioning scheme is impossible;
therefore, a standard serialization library has to support at least
per-class versioning.

>      Two areas that spring to mind are pointer comparisons outside a
>      single array for unserializing internal object pointers, and the
>      use of type_info::name() for type identification.

Using type_info::name() means that when you recompile your program with
another compiler, or a newer version of the same compiler, it might no
longer be able to read its files.