The new C++ serialization library supporting backward and forward compatibility

Authors: Michał Breiter, Robert M. Nowak

We describe new programming library cereal_fwd supporting serialization (marshalling) with forward and backward compatibility as well as portability between different platforms.
The cereal_fwd is able to serialize arbitrary set of C++ data structures, including variable length integer encoding, floating number support, string (text support), deep pointer serialization and deserialization, polymorphic pointers and logic needed to select proper serialization and deserialization functions, STL collections.

This library support binary format, as much space efficient. This article describes the proposed method, and benchmarking test to compare cereal_fwd to Boost.Serialization, Protocol Boffers and cereal.