JDK 9 RFR of JDK-8035452: Fix serial lint warnings in core libs

Stuart Marks stuart.marks at oracle.com
Fri Feb 28 16:58:44 UTC 2014


On 2/27/14 12:11 PM, Joe Darcy wrote:
> I am trying hard to remain blissfully ignorant of any more low-level details of
> the serialization format; however, I might not be successful on that goal much
> longer ;-)

I believe your latter statement is correct. :-)

> My preference in a case like this is to add the svuid if for no other reason
> that is is simple to explain and understand, even if it is not strictly required.

In general, it does seem reasonable to add a svuid in cases where it's difficult 
or impractical to prove that the lack of a svuid causes no compatibility issues.

> There is a difference in character between a serializable class in Java SE
> (java.* and javax.*) and the jdk.Exported(true) types in the JDK and a
> serializable class that lives in sun.* or some other jdk.Exported(false) area.
>
> For that latter, the serialization contract has to be different, with fewer
> guarantees, just as the general usage contract for those types has fewer
> guarantees. I think this is analogous to putting non-serializable classes into
> collections; the collection itself is serializable, but it won't be anymore if
> you put non-serializable objects into it.
>
> If a user happens to have a direct or indirect reference to an object of a JDK
> implementation type, the compatibility contract is weaker than if an object with
> a public Java SE type were being dealt with.

I'm not sure I buy this. Unfortunately, serialization differs from the general 
usage contract in that serialization exposes internals. Just like it can expose 
private (non-transient) fields, serialization can also can expose what might 
otherwise look like purely internal implementation types.

The canonical example of how an application can get a reference to an apparently 
internal class is java.util.TimeZone. If an app calls TimeZone.getDefault(), it 
gets back an instance of sun.util.calendar.ZoneInfo without ever mentioning this 
class by name. Furthermore, TimeZone and ZoneInfo are serializable, so they can 
be serialized directly or as part of another serializable object graph, and an 
instance of s.u.c.ZoneInfo does appear in the serialized byte stream. If 
s.u.c.ZoneInfo were not to have a svuid, an apparently innocuous change to it 
would clearly cause application incompatibilities.

As it happens, s.u.c.ZoneInfo does have a svuid. I also note in passing that 
TimeZone, an abstract class, also has a svuid.

>> Finally, EnumSet doesn't need a serial version UID. It's serialized using a
>> proxy class, so EnumSet never appears in a serialized byte stream. (Note, its
>> readObject throws an exception unconditionally.) So it's probably safe to
>> suppress its serialization warning.
>
> Yes, EnumSet was a bit tricky, it is serializable itself, but uses a proxy
> internally. ("Effective Java, 2nd edition" both recommends the proxy pattern and
> recommends adding a svuid to all serializable classes, but doesn't explicitly
> give guidance to this combination of features.)
>
> To avoid adding a long comment explaining the proxy pattern and why a svuid on
> EnumSet isn't really required, my preference would just be to add the svuid if
> it doesn't cause any harm.

In this case I think it's possible by local reasoning (looking elsewhere in the 
EnumSet.java source code) to determine that EnumSet instances themselves are 
never actually serialized, because of the use of the serialization proxy 
pattern. If nothing else, adding a svuid here sets a bad example, so suppressing 
the warning is reasonable. I don't think a long comment is necessary. Probably 
something like the following is sufficient:

@SuppressWarnings("serial") // no serialVersionUID because of serialization proxy

s'marks







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