A discussion about real-world modularity

[David M. Lloyd]

On 05/10/2012 08:45 AM, Alan Bateman wrote:
> On 09/05/2012 19:22, David M. Lloyd wrote:
>> Some of you might find this interesting:
>>
>> http://lists.jboss.org/pipermail/jboss-as7-dev/2012-May/005974.html
> The references to serialization are interesting as we need update
> serialization to work with modules. I can't quite tell from the link
> whether you are using the standard serialization protocol or something
> else. If it is the standard serialization protocol then I'm curious how
> you get the class loader identity into the stream.

Yes, and no.  This refers to my JBoss Marshalling project which is an 
alternative serialization API with more optimized implementations - it 
conforms to the spec in terms of serializable objects but has a number 
of extensions as well.  There are two implementations at the moment - a 
JDK-compatible protocol as well as a more optimized (for space and 
speed) protocol.

Either way the class data is written using a class resolver.  This is 
basically equivalent to overriding 
ObjectInputStream#resolve[Proxy]Class() and 
ObjectOutputStream#annotate[Proxy]Class().  The module identity is 
written out and re-read and used to select the appropriate class loader.

Note that as I state in that mailing, this is often, but not *always* 
preferred behavior, especially when you have different module environments.

-- 
- DML