"William Bardon" <wbardon@cabcds.org> wrote in message news:C73E689C9FCF884B9A550ECFADA0721C087D3E@exchange.cab-cds.org... I have read both the Boost Serialization online documentation and the archives of the Boost-Users mailing list looking for guidance, but I haven't found anything relevant. I see how to use BOOST_CLASS_TRACKING and BOOST_CLASS_IMPLEMENTATION to remove version tracking attributes from the XML tags. Usage of these macros does a lot more than remove attributes from the tags. I want to go in the opposite direction. I notice that the class_id and version attributes only appear the first time an object of a particular class is serialized. I want to force the version attribute to appear in every object's attribute list. Do I need to derive a custom archive to do this? yes I have looked at the source code for serialization, but I have trouble plowing through all of the macros, template expansions, and overloaded functions to locate the specific part that controls whether class traits are stored as attributes in a particular XML tag. I sympathize - its hard to follow. And I wrote it. Here are some hints: a) look at demo_fast_archive.cpp to see a model of how one can derive from an existing archive. b) You'll want to derive from xml_oarchive_impl<...> to create my_xml_oarchive c) add a "save_override" function to my_xml_oarchive which replaces the "save_override" function in basic_xml_oarchive.ipp. Implement this using functions defined basic_xml_oarchive.ipp Good luck - Robert Ramey Thanks in advance, Bill _______________________________________________ Boost-users mailing list Boost-users@lists.boost.org http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost-users