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1 | <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> |
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3 | <!-- | |
4 | (C) Copyright 2002-4 Robert Ramey - http://www.rrsd.com . | |
5 | Use, modification and distribution is subject to the Boost Software | |
6 | License, Version 1.0. (See accompanying file LICENSE_1_0.txt or copy at | |
7 | http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt) | |
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11 | <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../../../boost.css"> | |
12 | <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css"> | |
13 | <title>Serialization - To Do</title> | |
14 | </head> | |
15 | <body link="#0000ff" vlink="#800080"> | |
16 | <table border="0" cellpadding="7" cellspacing="0" width="100%" summary="header"> | |
17 | <tr> | |
18 | <td valign="top" width="300"> | |
19 | <h3><a href="../../../index.htm"><img height="86" width="277" alt="C++ Boost" src="../../../boost.png" border="0"></a></h3> | |
20 | </td> | |
21 | <td valign="top"> | |
22 | <h1 align="center">Serialization</h1> | |
23 | <h2 align="center">To Do</h2> | |
24 | </td> | |
25 | </tr> | |
26 | </table> | |
27 | <hr> | |
28 | <dl class="index"> | |
29 | <dt><a href="#portablebinaryarchives">Portable Binary Archives</a></dt> | |
30 | <dt><a href="#performancetesting">Performance Testing and Profiling</a></dt> | |
31 | <dt><a href="#backversioning">Back Versioning</a></dt> | |
32 | <dt><a href="#nortti">Testing for Environments with No RTTI</a></dt> | |
33 | <dt><a href="new_case_studies.html">Additional Case Studies</a></dt> | |
34 | </dl> | |
35 | ||
36 | These are enhancements that the serialization library needs but have not been done. | |
37 | Some of these projects, though tricky, are not huge and would be suitable | |
38 | for someone who has a limited time to spend on them. In particular, they | |
39 | might be of interest as student projects such as the Google Summer of Code. | |
40 | ||
41 | <h2><a name="portablebinaryarchives"></a>Portable Binary Archives</h2> | |
42 | Currently there is a portable binary archive in the examples directory. | |
43 | It is not regularly submitted to the exhaustive boost testing regimen | |
44 | but it is tested occasionally and has been used in production code. | |
45 | <p> | |
46 | It's missing the following: | |
47 | <ul> | |
48 | <li>Addition of portable floating point types. This is not trivial. In addition to | |
49 | handling floating point types of varying sizes, It requires | |
50 | handling invalid floating point numbers (NaNs) in a portable manner. | |
51 | <li>Integration into the Boost testing regimen similar to the other archive classes. | |
52 | </ul> | |
53 | ||
54 | <h2><a name="performancetesting"></a>Performance Testing and Profiling</h2> | |
55 | ||
56 | I've managed to setup performance profiling using the following: | |
57 | <ul> | |
58 | <li>current (as I write this) Boost.Build tools. | |
59 | <li>the gcc compiler. | |
60 | <li>and a shell script - profile.sh | |
61 | <li>library_status program from the tools/regression/src directory | |
62 | </ul> | |
63 | Invoking profile script produces a | |
64 | <a href="performance_status.html">table</a> | |
65 | which shows the results of each test and links to the actual | |
66 | profile. | |
67 | <p> | |
68 | The first thing I did was include some of the serialization library tests. | |
69 | It became immediately apparent that these tests were totally unsuitable | |
70 | for performance testing and that new tests needed to be written for this | |
71 | purpose. These tests would highlight the location of any performance | |
72 | bottlenecks in the serialization library. Whenever I've subjected my | |
73 | code in the past to this type of analysis, I've always been surprised | |
74 | to find bottlenecks in totally unanticipated places and fixing those | |
75 | has always led to large improvements in performance. I expect that | |
76 | this project would have a huge impact on the utility of the serialization | |
77 | library. | |
78 | ||
79 | <h2><a name="backversioning"></a>Back Versioning</h2> | |
80 | ||
81 | It has been suggested that a useful feature of the library would be | |
82 | the ability to create "older versions" of archives. Currently, | |
83 | the library permits one to make programs that are guaranteed | |
84 | the ability to load archives with classes of a previous version. | |
85 | But there is no way to save classes in accordance with a | |
86 | previous version. At first I dismissed this as a huge project | |
87 | with small demand. A cursory examination of the code revealed | |
88 | that this would not be very difficult. It would require some | |
89 | small changes in code and some additional tests. Also it | |
90 | would require special treatment in the documentation - perhaps | |
91 | a case study. | |
92 | ||
93 | ||
94 | <h2><a name="nortti"></a>Environments without RTTI</h2> | |
95 | ||
96 | I note that some have commented that this library requires RTTI. | |
97 | This is not strictly true. The examples and almost all the | |
98 | tests presume the existence of RTTI. But it should be possible | |
99 | to use the library without it. The example used for testing is an | |
100 | <code style="white-space: normal">extended_typeinfo</code> | |
101 | implemenation which presumes that all classes names have been exported. | |
102 | So, to make this library compatible for platforms without RTTI, | |
103 | a set of tests, examples and new manual section would have to be created. | |
104 | ||
105 | <hr> | |
106 | <p>Revised 1 November, 2008 | |
107 | <p><i>© Copyright <a href="http://www.rrsd.com">Robert Ramey</a> 2002-2008. | |
108 | Distributed under the Boost Software License, Version 1.0. (See | |
109 | accompanying file LICENSE_1_0.txt or copy at http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt) | |
110 | </i></p> | |
111 | </body> | |
112 | </html> |