Robert Ramey wrote:
Note that the only reason for using __declspec on tis platform is that without it, programs compiled in release mode will optimize away code not explicitly referred to. This breaks serialization of derived pointers. So this is a hack to work around over-zealous compiler optimizaton. This has been learned through painful and time consuming experience. It is possible this solution is overkill in some cases, but there is no way to know without investing a lot more effort.
I have no idea if the serialization library will work with /clr.
You can check the predefined Visual C++ macro _MANAGED to determine whether or not code is being compiled with /clr. If it is defined, code is being compiled with one of the /clr options, else it is not. This would allow you to use __declspec(dllexport) only when _MANAGED is not defined. John Maddock made changes to type_traits, checking this macro, to enable it to be compiled when /clr is used.
My intuition tells me I doubt it.
Theoretically one should be able to use the serialization library for non-.Net classes in mixed mode C++/CLI programming, since those classes, even when compiled with /clr, are considered standard C++ classes, and are supposed to accept standard C++ constructs entirely. I've done quite a bit of mixed-mode C++/CLI programming but I haven't practically tried to use the Boost serialization library with the non-.Net classes. I have successfully used other Boost libraries with the non-.Net classes, such as function, bind, regex, shared_ptr so the chances that the serialization library could work with those classes is high. All of the bugs I have found having to do with C++/CLI mixed-mode programming have to do with the inadequacies of the visual environment and not the standard C++ portion of the C++/CLI compiler per se.
If I had to do this I would consider using SWIG which I have used in another context (not using serialization) to integrate Boost components into .NET languages.
My experience with SWIG tells me that it is never the right way to use standard C++ with any partially standard environment.