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

From: Zach Laine (whatwasthataddress_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-03-19 18:17:29

On 3/19/07, Robert Ramey <ramey_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> Zach Laine wrote:
> > 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.
>
> My first reaction is that its a bad idea.  But I'm open to having my
> mind changed.  What I'm concerned about is the possibility that
> adding such a feature would ripple down into the library making
> it (even) more complex, harder to maintain, perhaps hurting
> performance, etc. just to address a case which shouldn't
> have occurred in the first place.  So why don't we proceed
> as follows:
>
> a) make the changes you need to make to address your
> current problem.
> b) When we get a look at the changes, we can decide
> whether they're simple and don't complicate the library
> or whether it starts a whole chain reaction.

Fair enough.  I'll have a patch ready soon and post it to the list.
Unless I hear otherwise, I'll work against version 1.33.1.

> More interesting to me would be a way to somehow
> trap this situation before it gets to this point.  Something
> like:
>
> An automatic serialization regression tester.

[snip]

This sounds like a great idea to me.

Zach Laine