boost serialization vs google protocol buffers? [closed]

Question

Does anyone with experience with these libraries have any comment on which one they preferred? Were there any performance differences or difficulties in using?

Answer 1

I've been using Boost Serialization for a long time and just dug into protocol buffers, and I think they don't have the exact same purpose. BS (didn't see that coming) saves your C++ objects to a stream, whereas PB is an interchange format that you read to/from.

PB's datamodel is way simpler: you get all kinds of ints and floats, strings, arrays, basic structure and that's pretty much it. BS allows you to directly save all of your objects in one step.

That means with BS you get more data on the wire but you don't have to rebuild all of your objects structure, whereas protocol buffers is more compact but there is more work to be done after reading the archive. As the name says, one is for protocols (language-agnostic, space efficient data passing), the other is for serialization (no-brainer objects saving).

So what is more important to you: speed/space efficiency or clean code?

Answer 2

I've played around a little with both systems, nothing serious, just some simple hackish stuff, but I felt that there's a real difference in how you're supposed to use the libraries.

With boost::serialization, you write your own structs/classes first, and then add the archiving methods, but you're still left with some pretty "slim" classes, that can be used as data members, inherited, whatever.

With protocol buffers, the amount of code generated for even a simple structure is pretty substantial, and the structs and code that's generated is more meant for operating on, and that you use protocol buffers' functionality to transport data to and from your own internal structures.