First off, I vote for bumping serialization to the top of the review queue. I've been using the library successfully in a development project for several months now. While I have not exercised the more advanced facets as some have, it works well with a complex mix of MFC, ATL, and boost libraries including bind, crc, function, iterators, signals and spirit. I've been able to serialize these to/from disk/clipboard/registry keys, etc. The only difficulty left (I haven't yet tried serialization17) is xml string output being rather verbose.
I have 1 more question. What about an archive that uses mmap? This should be very efficient for saving/restoring large structures in binary format. Is this a good idea?
This topic has come up on the spirit list. Originally I was a proponent of mmap approach based on experiencing major performance improvements with earlier version of Windows particularly Windows CE. Today I've seen much less difference in performance. I've been told that Windows 2K/Xp using NTFS memorymaps files under the covers, and unless your actively adressing into the memory range there's little to be gained, atleast on Windows. Perhaps other os do this as well?
I did all the STL collections as I considered these "fundamental". . I did a version of shared_ptr myself as a test/proof of concept.
1 more question? Hmmm so for I have received submissions for serialization of optional, scoped_ptr, date_time library among othersThese are from people who needed to serialize other boost objects that they use. I've stopped incorporating them as the library is getting too big for me to manage. If this library is ever accepted, serialization of boost components will have to be a responsibility separate from the serialization library itself. After, they are really applications of the serialization library rathet than components of the library.
Any thoughts on future serialization of boost::function even being possible? My use case is that I've a std::map of std::string/boost::function's that provide user configurable filters that detemine what gets displayed in a Table/List View. These currently are not being saved between sessions. It'd be great to do mFilterMap & ar; Robert, Thanks for the great job!!! Jeff