Deserialisation of PathBuf doesn't work

[neon64]

Deserialising a simple struct with a PathBuf inside fails with the error: SyntaxError

Can be reproduced by this Gist:
https://gist.github.com/neon64/03230cb40ff3bafed8ee#file-bincode_pathbuf-rs

#![feature(plugin)]
#![feature(custom_derive)]
#![plugin(serde_macros)]

extern crate serde;
extern crate bincode;

use std::path;
use bincode::SizeLimit;
use bincode::serde::{serialize, deserialize};

#[derive(Serialize, Deserialize)]
struct MyData {
    path: path::PathBuf
}

#[test]
fn it_works() {
    let data = MyData {
        path: path::Path::new("foo").to_path_buf()
    };
    let ser = serialize(&data, SizeLimit::Infinite).unwrap();
    let de: MyData = deserialize(&ser).expect("bincode failed");
}

It seems like it is just limited to bincode, as serde_json works for example.

[TyOverby]

The main issue is that Bincode was built for rustc-serialize, and there are some serde idioms that don't translate well.

The SyntaxError (updated to show useful information in c778cda) is hitting one of the things that bincode can't do. Namely that Bincode does not support Deserializer::visit.

However, PathBuf probably shouldn't require the kind of hinting that Deserializer::visit uses.

Resolutions:

1. I'll open up a bug on Serde and see if I can get this fixed on their side.
2. For now, you can just encode / decode using Strings. Sorry about the inconvenience.

[TyOverby]

This was fixed upstream in serde!