On 2011-10-24 15:49, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
On Sat, 22 Oct 2011 08:00:50 -0400, Jacob Carlborg <d...@me.com> wrote:
On 2011-10-21 17:19, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
On Fri, 21 Oct 2011 10:54:47 -0400, Jacob Carlborg <d...@me.com> wrote:
On 2011-10-21 16:17, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
This can still be done. If you have the compile-time type you can
always
forcefully generate the run time info (I would expect such a feature
when RTTI is fully developed).
The thing is that you may not have access to the compile-time type,
i.e. :
class Base {}
class Sub : Base {}
Base sub = new Sub;
Now the compile-time information specific for Sub is gone when
accessing "sub".
I have this problem with my serialization library. To workaround this
the user have to register the compile-time type with the serializer to
be able to (de)serialize via base class references.
Well, .NET requires you to put an attribute on a class to allow it to be
serializable. And that doesn't seem to get in the way of .NET code that
uses serialization.
-Steve
If I can make it work without specifying an attribute on a class why
shouldn't I. One thing less to think about. It's just in this special
case the type needs to registered with the serializer.
Serialization requires metadata about the datatypes being serialized. If
I don't want to serialize something, why should I have to pay the bloat
cost of being *able to* when I never actually do?
I don't have a good answer. In some cases one wants to have runtime
reflection and in other cases that just causes bloat.
BTW, in general, serialization doesn't not require metadata, only when
serializing through base class references.
I don't mind registering data types with the serializer that need to be
serialized. I know it would be nicer from a serializer library writer's
perspective to just say everything is serializable, but I'd rather have
D be efficient when it needs to be instead of trying to support every
possible use case no matter how uncommon. Again, when I serialize
things, I typically am in control of those data types. I have not yet
had a case where an *opaque* data type that needed to be serialized
wasn't one that I wrote myself.
And I wrote an entire system in C# that used remoting exclusively for
client-server communication. Every data type that needed to be used for
remoting must be serializable.
-Steve
--
/Jacob Carlborg
