Ok Robert, it seems you have already done the work ! "portable_binary_archive" fixes effectively the problem. I haven't founded that code before writing my patch. Thanks for your response, Steve On 2/11/07, Robert Ramey <ramey@rrsd.com> wrote:
Note that the native binary format has not pretentions to portability. Its designed to be the leanest and fastest version.
How is this different from "portable_archive" example included in the package?
Robert Ramey
Steve Gury wrote:
Hi,
I'm a user of boost serialization and I've detected a small lack in inter-architecture compatibility.
Issue: The C and C++ programming languages have different native storage of standard type depending on the architecture of the operating system. For example: On a Linux 64bits (LP64), a long variable is stored with 8 bytes but on a Windows 32bits (ILP32) that same variable will be stored with 4 bytes. Using boost binary serialization as common format for data exchange between those different systems won't work fine. I've written a small patch to fix this issue.
Change: _ Detect if binary serialized data come from a system with different native architecture by reading the header. Even if archive is created with the flag "no_header", the architecture signature is stored. _ Change the way how std::string (char*, and other) are stored. We have to store the string's length as a fixed size type (I've chosen unsigned int) and not size_t (which is an unsigned integer of 64bits on 64bits architecture and of 32bits on 32bits architecture). _ Change the way how long and unsigned long are stored by specializing template function for saving and loading. _ All those changes have been protected by a "#define BOOST_CROSS_ARCHITECTURE_COMPATIBLE"
I've compiled and tested this patch, on Windows XP 32bits, Debian Linux 64bits (x86_64), compiled with Visual Studio 2005 ( 8.0) and gcc 4.1
Best regards, Steve Gury
PS:You can find the patch as attachment.
_______________________________________________ Unsubscribe & other changes: http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost
_______________________________________________ Unsubscribe & other changes: http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost