Re: [Boost-users] Developing a new boost archive

Subject: Re: [Boost-users] Developing a new boost archive
From: Roberto Fichera (kernel_at_[hidden])
Date: 2012-02-13 12:11:47

On 02/13/2012 05:13 PM, Robert Ramey wrote:
> Roberto Fichera wrote:
>> Hi All in the list,
>>
>> I'm basically new to boost so I hope to find support here to
>> integrate my own serialization  library within the boost archive logic.
> I looked at your post and had a lot of difficulty in figuring out
> how I could help you.  I think the above statement is the source
> of my difficulty.
>
> If you have you're own serialization library, what do you
> need the boost one for?  If you want to use the boost one,
> what does your own library have to do with anything?

Well! I'll try to explain you a little bit more my problem. Since we are going
to use some libraries that are based on boost, including their related
serialization logic, instead to rewrite their serialization method I was
thinking to make an integration between the two serialization logics.
Since the boost serialization is mostly based like mine on two main concept:
Archive and data representation( via serialize method), I was approaching
the possibility to still use the boost serialization method as it is
but instead provide a new boost archive just for modeling the serialized data
in terms of the my serialization.

> I should say that creating one's own archive implementation
> is harder than it should be.  This is due to the fact that
> documentation and implementation of some details
> of this process are ambiguous and non-obvious. None-the-less
> a number of people have managed to create their own
> archive implementations without too much problem - os
> it IS doable.  It does require knowledge of template
> meta-programming and investigation of ohw the current
> libraryies are implemented

Yep! I know. But as you certain know a little help might really
speedup the learning phase ;-) !

> If you want to make an archive implementation which
> some format not supported by the current ones, that
> would be a quesion we might be able to help with.

It's just an integration or a transformation if you prefer

> If this is what you want to do, you might look at simple log
> archive and trivial archive in thedocumentation.  Also there
> are a few other archives around which illustrate how this
> ahs been done.  There is one for yaml and one for json
> these are in the sandbox and/or vault.  There is also
> included in the package a portable_binary_archive.

As I already said, I started from the simple_log_archive which looks
pretty straight to read since it's one single file implementing the whole
tree walking and representation. So, starting from that file I wrote the
posted email to know only certain details that I need in order to progress
into the implementation.

I'll have a look into the json and yaml archive format for sure, since
they could be certain helpful to me.

> Also special archive implementations have been created
> to support MPI.

Yep! I also had a look on this but I never used the C++ MPI interface.
I only used the plain C interface to implement my serialization
format over MPI.

> Looking at your specific question, I can only say
> I think you need to invest more time in studying the
> above mentioned subjects before I could be of help.

Yep! This is what I'm actually doing, but I'm still missing something
that's why I posted my email ;-) !

>
> Robert Ramey
>
>
>
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