113 lines
4.9 KiB
HTML
113 lines
4.9 KiB
HTML
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<!--
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(C) Copyright 2002-4 Robert Ramey - http://www.rrsd.com .
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Use, modification and distribution is subject to the Boost Software
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License, Version 1.0. (See accompanying file LICENSE_1_0.txt or copy at
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http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt)
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-->
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<head>
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<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
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<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../../../boost.css">
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<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css">
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<title>Serialization - To Do</title>
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</head>
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<body link="#0000ff" vlink="#800080">
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<table border="0" cellpadding="7" cellspacing="0" width="100%" summary="header">
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<tr>
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<td valign="top" width="300">
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<h3><a href="../../../index.htm"><img height="86" width="277" alt="C++ Boost" src="../../../boost.png" border="0"></a></h3>
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</td>
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<td valign="top">
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<h1 align="center">Serialization</h1>
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<h2 align="center">To Do</h2>
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</td>
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</tr>
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</table>
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<hr>
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<dl class="index">
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<dt><a href="#portablebinaryarchives">Portable Binary Archives</a></dt>
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<dt><a href="#performancetesting">Performance Testing and Profiling</a></dt>
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<dt><a href="#backversioning">Back Versioning</a></dt>
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<dt><a href="#nortti">Testing for Environments with No RTTI</a></dt>
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<dt><a href="new_case_studies.html">Additional Case Studies</a></dt>
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</dl>
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These are enhancements that the serialization library needs but have not been done.
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Some of these projects, though tricky, are not huge and would be suitable
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for someone who has a limited time to spend on them. In particular, they
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might be of interest as student projects such as the Google Summer of Code.
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<h2><a name="portablebinaryarchives"></a>Portable Binary Archives</h2>
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Currently there is a portable binary archive in the examples directory.
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It is not regularly submitted to the exhaustive boost testing regimen
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but it is tested occasionally and has been used in production code.
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<p>
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It's missing the following:
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<ul>
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<li>Addition of portable floating point types. This is not trivial. In addition to
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handling floating point types of varying sizes, It requires
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handling invalid floating point numbers (NaNs) in a portable manner.
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<li>Integration into the Boost testing regimen similar to the other archive classes.
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</ul>
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<h2><a name="performancetesting"></a>Performance Testing and Profiling</h2>
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I've managed to setup performance profiling using the following:
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<ul>
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<li>current (as I write this) Boost.Build tools.
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<li>the gcc compiler.
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<li>and a shell script - profile.sh
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<li>library_status program from the tools/regression/src directory
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</ul>
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Invoking profile script produces a
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<a href="performance_status.html">table</a>
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which shows the results of each test and links to the actual
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profile.
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<p>
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The first thing I did was include some of the serialization library tests.
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It became immediately apparent that these tests were totally unsuitable
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for performance testing and that new tests needed to be written for this
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purpose. These tests would highlight the location of any performance
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bottlenecks in the serialization library. Whenever I've subjected my
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code in the past to this type of analysis, I've always been surprised
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to find bottlenecks in totally unanticipated places and fixing those
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has always led to large improvements in performance. I expect that
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this project would have a huge impact on the utility of the serialization
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library.
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<h2><a name="backversioning"></a>Back Versioning</h2>
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It has been suggested that a useful feature of the library would be
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the ability to create "older versions" of archives. Currently,
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the library permits one to make programs that are guaranteed
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the ability to load archives with classes of a previous version.
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But there is no way to save classes in accordance with a
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previous version. At first I dismissed this as a huge project
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with small demand. A cursory examination of the code revealed
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that this would not be very difficult. It would require some
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small changes in code and some additional tests. Also it
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would require special treatment in the documentation - perhaps
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a case study.
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<h2><a name="nortti"></a>Environments without RTTI</h2>
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I note that some have commented that this library requires RTTI.
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This is not strictly true. The examples and almost all the
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tests presume the existence of RTTI. But it should be possible
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to use the library without it. The example used for testing is an
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<code style="white-space: normal">extended_typeinfo</code>
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implemenation which presumes that all classes names have been exported.
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So, to make this library compatible for platforms without RTTI,
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a set of tests, examples and new manual section would have to be created.
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<hr>
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<p>Revised 1 November, 2008
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<p><i>© Copyright <a href="http://www.rrsd.com">Robert Ramey</a> 2002-2008.
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Distributed under the Boost Software License, Version 1.0. (See
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accompanying file LICENSE_1_0.txt or copy at http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt)
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</i></p>
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</body>
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</html>
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