Re: [boost] [serialization] Must the objects being serializedoutlive the archive?

Subject: Re: [boost] [serialization] Must the objects being serializedoutlive the archive?
From: Robert Ramey (ramey_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-09-18 16:27:20

Chris Yuen wrote:
> Jeff Flinn wrote:
>
>> IIUC, tracked objects have their addresses place in a map, so that
>> subsequent serialized pointers of the same value are serialized as a
>> reference to the original object at that address, rather than
>> serializing another copy of the object.
>
> That was spot on! I did a couple of tests and I think I've confirmed
> this is indeed the behavior

It's also described in the documentation under "tracking"

>  and the reason why data gets corrupt. On
> my platform (MSVC), new data gets allocated to the last free
> pointer's address and that confuses boost::serialization.

This is only a problem because you delete the data while it's being
serialized.

>> From your understanding, doesn't that basically means the "objects
>> being
> serialized must outlive the archive"? Since there's no way to tell
> "new" to not allocate objects at an older address unless I keep
> objects there. So basically I must keep all data in memory until the
> serialization process is complete.

> I tried to think hard about this. Do you see any workaround to this
> issue so that I don't have to effectively double the memory usage?

I don't see any doubling of memory usage here.

> (Maybe have boost::serialization write things out immediately and
> clear the internal cached pointers)? Maybe boost::serialization
> should provide that command or some kind of "flush" command?

Maybe you don't want to serialize via a pointer.  Just serialize the
data itself.  Then there is nothing to allocate/deallocate, etc.

If you're having to go to such trouble, you must be doing something
fundamentally wrong.

Robert Ramey