BTW, why are you using explicit instantiations with seperate template .cpp files? It becomes a management nightmare keeping track of what needs to be explicitly instantiated in large projects. They're templates, so why not just have everything in headers? An additional advantage being that code is only generated for code that's used (implicitly instantiated) by the client.
OK - you've got me.
No problem, what about the issue of explicit instantiations with seperate template .ipp files vs. header only template files? The only reason I see for the explicit instantiations is that some template class function definitions are unexposed in headers. Additionally, shouldn't have regression tests caught that polymorphic_portable_binary_iarchive.cpp and olymorphic_portable_binary_oarchive.cpp failed to compile? -Mostafa