forbidding serialization methods as members of records

[Jonathan Gibbons]

On 10/31/19 5:25 AM, Chris Hegarty wrote:
>
>> On 31 Oct 2019, at 12:21, Vicente Romero <vicente.romero at oracle.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> In the past we discussed about forbidding the declaration of some serialization related methods in records. In particular:
>>
>>   writeObject(ObjectOutputStream)
>> readObjectNoData()
>> readObject(ObjectInputStream)
>> I wonder if we still want to enforce that restriction, meaning that it should be reflected in the spec, or if it is not necessary anymore,
> Where we ended up with Serializable Records, is that the runtime is specified to ignore these methods if they appear in a serializable record ( there are tests that assert this ).  The javac restriction is no longer strictly necessary, but of course catches effectively-useless declarations early, and without resorting checkers, inspection, etc.
>
> -Chris.
>
This seems to be in line with the general philosophy of the 
serialization specification in which candidate declarations for 
serialization-related members are ignored if they don't fulfill all the 
required properties.  Without commenting on the merits of the policy, it 
would at least be good if the policy was consistent. Failing that, a 
warning (-Xlint:serial) would be in line with current javac behavior.

-- Jon