I implemented some of that plan, to see how it would go. I tarred up the test/ directory for you to peruse, it's at http://www.resophonic.com/boost-serialization-test.tar.gz I added a parameter to the jamfile, BOOST_SERIALIZATION_DATA_ROOT, which gets set to BOOST_ROOT/libs/serialization/test/data by default. I messed with test/test_tools.hpp and added a routine test_serialization(), where the action is. It writes a type out to an archive, reads it back in, and calls a template function check(), whose default implementation is just BOOST_CHECK(what_was_written_out == what_was_read_in); I revamped test_vector.cpp, test_simple_class.cpp, test_set.cpp, test_null_ptr.cpp, and test_variant.cpp. In the process I converted these to use the cool autoregistering unit-tests. There are corresponding tweaks in the jamfile. test_serialization("name_of_test", object_to_test) will create tempfiles in, as mentioned, BOOST_SERIALIZATION_DATA_ROOT/ BOOST_PLATFORM/ BOOST_VERSION/ BOOST_COMPILER/ BOOST_ARCHIVE_TEST/ name_of_test so this "name_of_test" has to be unique. My first implementation had it calculating a name based on __FILE__ and an index, but this would cause problems when you move test routines around. test_vector.cpp and test_simple_class.cpp show how much bolierplate code disappears with this scheme. test_variant.cpp and test_set.cpp show writing a specialization of check() for the type being tested. In test_null_ptr.cpp you have to write a wrapper class to ensure that the two pointer types get written in the right order. This probably comes up a lot, it makes me think that one would like to be able to serialize boost::tuple (that one sounds interesting and tractable, I'll have a look) so that you could just stack things up that way. So I believe this clears the way for comparing different boost versions, compilers and portable archives across platforms... test_serialization just needs to scan some directories, deserialize from foreign archives, and compare. I think that even if you don't do all that, the changes are an improvement maintenance-wise. Whaddaya think? -t