Re: [boost] [serialization] Support for multiple class name strings

From: Zach Laine (whatwasthataddress_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-03-19 09:26:53

Well, this went a little off-topic, but I still would like to know why
Robert thinks that adding aliases is a bad idea.  It seems to me that
my mistake is a pretty likely one in the long term, and so the
Serialization library needs to provide a way to recover from such
mistakes, or reduce the chances of their introduction altogether (by
removing BOOST_CLASS_EXPORT()).  At the very least, if
BOOST_CLASS_EXPORT() is to stay, an explicit note regarding this
pitfall should be added to the docs.  Again, I am happy to write a
patch for the code and/or docs.

Zach Laine

On 3/16/07, Emil Dotchevski <emildotchevski_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> > So to me it seems natural
> > to included in the header along with the whole
> > class declaration.
>
> Consider a library that provides foo.h, which defines class foo, and a
> program that #includes "foo.h" because it needs to use class foo, but it
> doesn't need to serialize it. To me, it isn't natural for such a program to
> require boost serialization headers.
>
> I suppose you could separate serialize/load/save overloads in a different
> header file, but because typically they need to be friends, foo.h would have
> to declare them in order to make them friends, which is a hassle. Instead,
> you could simply define serialize/load/save directly in foo.h without
> including any serialization stuff -- except that a program that does
> serialize foo objects would have to register class foo "manually".
>
> > That way when that header gets
> > used by other programs, they all share the same
> > external name - as they should since they're sharing
> > the same header.
>
> If I want to make a particular class to have the same external name across
> multiple programs, this is easy to achieve by sharing the code that
> registers that class with boost serialization. I just don't think that the
> class' header file is the best place for this registration.
>
> Emil Dotchevski
>
> _______________________________________________
> Unsubscribe & other changes: http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost
>