This is a question of instantiations. If A.cpp doesn't refer to a specific archive (e.g. text_?archive) the code won't be generated. One way to do this for A.cpp is include the following at the end of the code: "Fred Lupien" <fred.lupien@gmail.com> wrote in message news:32e6d6bf0709301357md97df93pa65405cefcb2cd05@mail.gmail.com... Honestly I have been looking for a solution for hours before I made this post. I am not so familiar with boost, the only module I use is serialization so maybe my error is obvious but I went through all the doc on boost.org without luck. I should have been more descriptive I my first post. I does not work because I get unresolved externals on the base class save / load functions when I implement the derived class save/load functions. I am using the intrusive version of serialization so their should be no particular namespace requirement. Here is a simplified example of my problem: ///////////////////////////////////// A.h Class A: { friend class boost::serialization::access; template<class Archive> void save(Archive & ar, const unsigned int version) const; template<class Archive> void load(Archive & ar, const unsigned int version); BOOST_SERIALIZATION_SPLIT_MEMBER() }; ///////////////////////////////////// ///////////////////////////////////// B.h class B: public A { friend class boost::serialization::access; template<class Archive> void save(Archive & ar, const unsigned int version) const; template<class Archive> void load(Archive & ar, const unsigned int file_version ); BOOST_SERIALIZATION_SPLIT_MEMBER() } BOOST_CLASS_EXPORT_GUID(B, "B") ///////////////////////////////////// ///////////////////////////////////// A.cpp template<class Archive> void A::save(Archive & ar, const unsigned int version) const { ar & var1; } template<class Archive> void A::load(Archive & ar, const unsigned int file_version ) { ar & var; somestuff(); } /////////////insert explicit instantiation for text archives ///////// #include <boost/archive/text_iarchive.hpp> #include <boost/archive/text_iarchive.hpp> template void A::load<boost::archive::text_iarchive>(boost::archive::text_iarchive & ar, const unsigned int file_version ); template void A::save<boost::archive::text_oarchive>(boost::archive::text_oarchive & ar, const unsigned int file_version ); /////////////////////////////////////