Robert Ramey wrote:
Changing the names a little bit for clarity, I always anticipated archive developers would use something like the following:
template<class T> void save(boost::hpc_archive &ar, const std::valarray<T> & t...) { const unsigned int count = t.size(); ar << count; save_array(ar, get_data(t),t.size()); }
This would apply the save_array enhancement to all classes derived from hpc_archive. In fact I would expect that this is the way people are doing it now.
This doesn't work well for several reasons. First, the static type of ar is hpc_archive, so hpc_archive must be a polymorphic archive base, and this is not desirable since it's High Performance. Second, if you add an overload for std::vector: template<class T> void save(boost::hpc_archive &ar, const std::vector<T> & t...) the version in the Serialization library will take precedence since it's an exact match for the archive argument, and the overload above requires a derived to base conversion. Even if it did work, I don't see in which circumstances a class author would like to _not_ take advantage of the save_array enhancement. Ideally, he should just call save_array in save, without restricting it to a specific set of archives. I don't see what you gain by denying him this opportunity - assuming that it can be provided without negative consequences for the current code base or existing archive formats.