Peter Dimov wrote:
In general, I propose adding some sort of user data mechanism to archives.
What do you suggest along those lines?
We have found it necessary to associate user data with archives in certain circumstances. In our case, I have simply added a boost::any as member data to every archive (by introducing a base class for all archives, since currently input and output archives do not have a common base class). Some classes in our system require that this boost::any contain specific state objects that are then accessed in serialization code. One example is the shared_ptr registry we're using, but we also have other objects that we store as user data in archives. For example, one part of our system uses a 3rd party library that has its own serialization system. In order to integrate it with our system that uses boost::serialization, we have to associate user data with a boost::serialization archive that contains a serialization stream of the 3rd party library. Now, if during the deserialization of our objects we encounter a pointer to a 3rd party library object, we trigger the 3rd party library's serialization system directly from our serialization code. Best Regards, Martin TAB Austria Haiderstraße 40 4052 Ansfelden Austria Phone: +43 7229 78040-218 Fax: +43 7229 78040-209 E-mail: martin.ecker@tab.at http://www.tab.at