Re: [boost] [1.43][Serialization] Serialization library seriosly broken

Subject: Re: [boost] [1.43][Serialization] Serialization library seriosly broken
From: Robert Ramey (ramey_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-04-24 13:23:35

Hartmut Kaiser wrote:
> As I alluded to in my mail yesterday, the serialization library seems
> to be utterly broken in the current trunk, and unfortunately in the
> current
> release branch as well.
>
> We're seeing assertions at application initialization time during
> serialization registration in the file void_cast.hpp, line 225. That
> is in debug builds. In release builds we're seeing aborts later on.
> These problems seem to be caused by registering the same type more
> than once but from different shared libraries.
>
> We do not intentionally register the types more than once, even more,
> we
> have no control over this. Here is the simplified code causing the
> multiple registrations from different modules:
>
>    struct Parameter_impl : ::Par  // ::Par is a C-struct
>    {
>    private:
>        friend class boost::serialization::access;
>        template<class Archive>
>        void serialize(Archive &ar, const unsigned int version)
>        {
>            ar & lambda;
>            ar & allowedl;
>            // more serialization going on
>        }
>    };
>
>    struct Parameter  {
>      boost::shared_ptr< Parameter_impl > p;
>      // ...
>      private:
>        friend class boost::serialization::access;
>        template<class Archive>
>        void serialize(Archive &ar, const unsigned int version)
>        {
>          ar & p;
>        }
>    };
>
> Note: no BOOST_..._EXPORT or other serialization macros are utilized
> in this file.
>
> This code is included by several files from different shared library
> modules as it is passed around.
> It is just including this file into compilation units from different
> shared libraries what causes the problems described above.
>
> All code worked before and still does with V1.42.
>
> If this error stays in the release branch the whole Boost release
> will be unusable for us, causing endless grief in the future.
>
> Regards Hartmut
>
> ---------------
> Meet me at BoostCon
> www.boostcon.com

I'll take a look at this. According to the SVN log for void_cast.cpp
this file hasn't been changed since November 29 so it's not just
a tweak in an assert or some other trivial fix.

Robert Ramey

 I very cursory examination indicates that it's not a trivial
issue