[Opensim-dev] .net serialization of SOGs

[diva at metaverseink.com]

After thinking about it, I think I know the way out of our dependence on 
.net serialization. I'm planning to do this [today], so if anyone has 
concerns, please speak up.

The main problem with what we have is that the serialization is being 
done automagically by .net via reflection, leaving us completely out of 
the loop and at the mercy of the nasty .net serialization restrictions. 
So the smooth transition out of this is to reproduce the serialization 
strings that .net is producing, but via our own code. That will be stage 
1, and will ensure 100% compatibility with the data that already exists. 
But that will give us the ground to then do the right things with 
serialization, like adding a MIME type and a version number to whatever 
is being serialized.

Luckily jhurliman has already done most of it in libomv, probably as a 
consequence of him pulling his hair when he encountered the SOG 
serialization in OpenSim... I'm undecided on whether to reuse that code 
as-is or copy-paste-change it, since I'm planning to add more fields, 
and context, to the SOG serializations. Without getting into flame wars 
between OpenSim and libomv, any thoughts on this, from a pragmatic point 
of view?


On 10/9/2010 12:39 PM, Dahlia Trimble wrote:
> How about the various OSD serializations in libomv? They seem to be
> pretty robust these days.
>
> On Sat, Oct 9, 2010 at 11:05 AM, <diva at metaverseink.com
> <mailto:diva at metaverseink.com>> wrote:
>
>     Dear devs,
>
>     I'm pulling my hair here with the serialization of scene objects.
>     This is horrible! Using .Net serialization for something as
>     important as this is the worst idea ever. We're completely frozen.
>     I'm trying to add an additional field for the creator info, and I'm
>     stuck in all sorts of ways: I can't compute the value of that field
>     at serialization-time, and then there are the issues of
>     compatibility with previous versions of the SOP class.
>
>     I'd like to understand all the implications of doing an entirely
>     different serialization procedure, one that does not use reflection,
>     and that allows for processing-during-serialization. What will
>     break, and therefore needs fixing?
>
>     I understand all archiving related to previous versions will break,
>     so we need to keep supporting the existing serialization 'disease'
>     for the foreseeable future. I also understand that TPs/crossings
>     between sims that talk different SOG serializations will break, but
>     that's not so bad.
>
>     Anything else I should be aware of before I go off and redo this?
>
>     Diva / Crista
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