From: Jeff Garland (jeff_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-11-08 12:11:08
On Mon, 08 Nov 2004 11:07:16 -0500, Beman Dawes wrote
> * Adding a dependency to the serialization library isn't a good idea
> either. No matter how nice boost.serialization is, some
> boost.filesystem users will not wish to use it, and will not want
> the dependency.
Since the needed code for serialization is basically a template function the
dependency can be limited to those using serialization by having a new header
for serialization code. So in date-time we have something like:
#include <boost/date_time/posix_time/time_serialize.hpp>
Filesystem could do something similar.
> Class path already has a member, path::string(), which in the
> current implementation returns a reference to m_path, and in any
> implementation must return the equivalent of a const reference to
> m_path. Going the other way, the append function can be used to
> import a serialized string. I'm not familiar with how
> boost.serialization works, but wouldn't you be better off to use
> those already public functions for serialization?
>
> If not, I'm willing to make m_path protected, but would like to
> explore other approaches to the serialization problem first.
I think you could easily write your serialization functions to just use the
string() interface.
Jeff