Abstract: A system for providing cross-platform portability of object-oriented structures employs a set of canonical definitions of objects to produce an archive of an object-oriented structure in a standard format. The archive may be provided within object-oriented environments utilizing different operating systems to reproduce the archived structure using native objects specific to the respective operating systems. An archiver is provided for producing portable archives of native object-oriented structures. A de-archiver is provided for constructing native object-oriented structures within an object-oriented environment as specified in a portable archive. The archiver and the de-archiver are adapted to store and to retrieve custom, or operating system-specific, information within canonical object references in the portable archive.