id	summary	reporter	owner	description	type	status	milestone	component	version	severity	resolution	keywords	cc
3990	[serialization] data loss in version field	vgough@…	Robert Ramey	"Encfs uses a version which is a date in the from ""YYYYMMDD"".

This is common: date stamps have been used for decades in manually-entered records (such as DNS records), as well as automatically in distributed system - such as with Lamport clocks that incorporate real-time components.

There is data loss:  version 1.42 silently corrupts the version field of programs using more then 16 bits for a version number.  We can argue about how important the data is, but regardless, this change CAUSES DATA LOSS.  Data loss is the worst thing a serialization or archival system can do - there would have been less impact of adding a random core dump 50% of the time then in loosing even 1 bit of data 100% of the time for affected applications.

End users are starting to be affected: deployment systems which build from source, such as Macports, are starting to build against boost 1.42.  This causes compatibility problems and end users are getting the short end of the stick in the form of archives that can't be read.

The quicker this is fixed, the better, before longer-cycle deployments pick this up.

"	Feature Requests	closed	To Be Determined	serialization	Boost 1.43.0	Problem	wontfix		darose@… ck@…