On 10/14/2010 11:55 PM, Robert Ramey wrote:
Sergey Voropaev wrote:
Beman Dawes <bdawes <at> acm.org> writes:
I think boost::serialization library has very serious flaw. It is lack of backward compatibility for binary archive. I discovered this problem when I did upgrade from 1.34 to 1.43 and 1.44 versions of BOOST. 1.44 library can not work with old binary archive. The reason - format of binary header of archive has been changed. I think 1.45 version should be corrected for this problem and/or we should place some announcement about recommendation not to use the 1.44 version to work with binary archive.
See: https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/ticket/4660 http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lib.boost.devel/208588
I"m aware of this, it's just that I haven't the the time to deal with it right now. I've had a lot of trouble with this and I'm warying of trying to fix it without having the time to do it right.
I just read through the bug report. Oh god. <sigh> I'm open to hearing suggestions. Robert, it sounds like you're not going to be able to fix this any time soon, is that right? Then it sounds to me like binary serialization is just broken, full stop. If we decide to push ahead with 1.45, my opinion is that we put a #error in the binary serialization headers so that anybody who tries to use it gets a hard error. If you care about binary serialization, the answer is just to not use 1.45. And not use 1.44 either, but that ship has sailed ... without even so much as a release note. I have to say, as a release manager, I'm seriously pissed off. Can anybody comment on why there isn't any note AT ALL about serialization on http://www.boost.org/users/news/version_1_44_0? And nary a word about binary serialization incompatibilities at http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_44_0/libs/serialization/doc/release.html? Robert? Can we at least update the website now? -- Eric Niebler BoostPro Computing http://www.boostpro.com