I was confused about another error message I was getting from the compiler and it mistakenly lead me to believe it was not accessing the private constructor. Sorry for the mix up.

On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 7:11 PM, Robert Dailey <rcdailey@gmail.com> wrote:

I have a class that can be constructed statically in code, or constructed by data (this is where boost::serialization comes in).

For example:

class foo

{
public:
   foo() {}

   foo( std::string text )
   : m_text( text )

   {}

private:

   template< class Archive >
   void serialize( Archive& archive, unsigned int version )

   {
   archive & m_text;
   }

   std::string m_text;

   friend class boost::serialization::access;
};

There is one problem with this, though. It is possible for a user of this class to create a "foo" with the default constructor, thus enabling them to have "zombie" objects. The only thing I want using the default constructor is boost::serialization, not the user. Is there a way I can make the default constructor private and still have boost::serialization access it? Keep in mind that this must work polymorphically too.