Re: [Boost-users] [serialization] Announcing eos portable archive

Subject: Re: [Boost-users] [serialization] Announcing eos portable archive
From: Jeff Flinn (TriumphSprint2000_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-09-26 08:38:51

Daniel Krügler wrote:
> Pfligersdorffer, Christian wrote:
> [..]
>>
>>> b) The version of the portable binary library that is
>>> currently part of the package uses the endianness on the
>>> machine which create the archive.  On reading the archive,
>>> the endienness is swapped around if and only if the the
>>> endienness of the reading machine is different than that
>>> contained in the archive.  The endiennes of the archive is
>>> stored in the archive header. The idea is  that the most
>>> likely reader of an archive is one using the same endienness
>>> of the  creator. Also, Endienness of the archive being
>>> created can be overridden during archive construction. This
>>> is basically a way of keeping myself out of any endieness debate.
>>
>> I see. The issue also came up in the lengthy cross-platform binary
>> serialization a few weeks ago. I personally understand one would like to
>> choose the endianness but what great benefits does it bear? We chose
>> little endian because it is most widely used and was convenient to
>> implement. I guess it would be a minor modification to allow for both
>> but I don't deem it neccessary.
> 
> IMO taking care of the endianness should be an important aspect
> of a portable binary library.
> 
> Just my 2 cents,

Make that 4 cents. :-)

I agree with Robert's approach on this one. I'd go even further though 
and make the endian-ness part of the archive type. Or at least a 
required constructor parameter separate from the other flags. Some of 
our engineers were bitten when the endian-ness defaulted to the build 
machine's endian-ness. Lot's of problems with Mac OS universal binaries.

Jeff