Hi all, The binary_oarchive and binary_iarchive classes serialize an object to a stream whose buffer type is streambuf=basic_streambuf<char>. It means that the serialized object is translated into an array of chars. It is fine if you can work with an array containing chars. Unfortunately, some libraries need serialized objects that are translated into arrays whose type is different from char. For instance, I'm using a library that requires an array of unsigned chars. For that reason, I have defined generic (templated) tbinary_oarchive and tbinary_iarchive classes based on the ones provided by the boost serialization library. It is straightforward since the original boost serialization classes use the std::ostream type that is just an instantiation of the generic basic_ostream class with the char type (ostream=basic_ostream<char>). For instance, the tbinary_oarchive class is now defined as follows: // CODE BEGIN template <class Tdata> class tbinary_oarchive : public binary_oarchive_impl< tbinary_oarchive<Tdata>, typename std::basic_ostream<Tdata>::char_type, typename std::basic_ostream<Tdata>::traits_type > { public: tbinary_oarchive(std::basic_ostream<Tdata> & os, unsigned int flags = 0) : binary_oarchive_impl< tbinary_oarchive, typename std::basic_ostream<Tdata>::char_type, typename std::basic_ostream<Tdata>::traits_type >(os, flags) {} tbinary_oarchive(std::basic_streambuf<Tdata> & bsb, unsigned int flags = 0) : binary_oarchive_impl< tbinary_oarchive, typename std::basic_ostream<Tdata>::char_type, typename std::basic_ostream<Tdata>::traits_type >(bsb, flags) {} }; // CODE END Then, when I need to use a binary archiver with the type unsigned char, I just put the following lines in my code: // CODE BEGIN typedef boost::archive::tbinary_oarchive<unsigned char> BinaryOBArchive; typedef boost::archive::tbinary_iarchive<unsigned char> BinaryIBArchive; BOOST_SERIALIZATION_REGISTER_ARCHIVE(BinaryOBArchive) BOOST_SERIALIZATION_REGISTER_ARCHIVE(BinaryIBArchive) // CODE END This compiles fine except that I get some linker errors concerning the basic_binary_oarchive and the basic_binary_oprimitive classes. For instance: undefined reference to `boost::archive::basic_binary_oprimitive<boost::archive::tbinary_oarchive<unsigned char>, unsigned char, std::char_traits<unsigned char>
::~basic_binary_oprimitive()'
It seems that parts of the serialization library's code is outside the definition classes, preventing to extend it with different binary types... Is there a workaround? Thank you very much for your patience reading this e-mail entirely, Florent.