[Boost-users] Serializing handles to opaque objects

Subject: [Boost-users] Serializing handles to opaque objects
From: James Amundson (amundson_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-10-27 17:32:08

I am trying to use Boost Serialization with a set of classes which 
contain handles to opaque objects written in C. (Specifically, the 
objects are MPI communicator objects and the handles are of the MPI_Comm 
type, but I don't think that's important for the problem.)

Now, I can easily extract the information from the objects necessary to 
serialize and de-serialize them; that is not the problem. The problem is 
that several classes have handles to the *same* object. When I restore 
the objects I need to make certain that all the identical handles end up 
pointing to the same object. I don't see an easy way to do that.

The problem seems to me to be highly analogous to the (solved) problem 
of serializing pointers, except that the handles are not literally 
pointers. I'd be grateful for any advice

Thanks,
Jim Amundson