[boost] Re:Serialization and Reflection

From: Robert Ramey (ramey_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-12-17 11:52:02

A very interesting post.

I also believe it is interesting to consider whether it is valuable
to make a system of reflection for C++.  I'm not sure whether
it is or not - but it is interesting non the less.  In particular we
would be interested in compile-time reflection as well as 
runtime reflection.  I found the links on your subject interesting.

>Second, in terms of Serialization, I'm willing to create a portable,
>efficient binary archiver based on CDR (the format used by CORBA). Since
>I'm lazy, I will probably steal most of the code from ACE/TAO
>(http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/ACE.html). Note that CDR has minimal
>overhead (eg: it has variable byte-ordering, so byte swapping may not be
>necessary). If there's interest, let me know.

There was much interest in implementing XDR.   I believe that initially
it proceeded rapidly but bogged down because it depended on the
existence of some code shipped only with unix.  Ultimately, implemenation
of a portable binary stream, requires specific coding for each machine
architecture.  This makes the task larger than it first appears.

Robert Ramey