Serialization

[Godmar Back]

> 
>   In ObjectStreamClass.lookup() the following line seems to be missing:
>        osc.serialVersionUID = getSerialVersionUID( cl );
> 
>     Once added, and with the addition of serialVersionUID members in key
> classes we were able to obtain some interoperability of serialized objects
> with Sun's JVM.

 Ben,

Kaffe currently lacks the computation of serialversion uids as described
in Sun's object serialization specification.  That is part of the problem.

The second part, which is more important, is that Sun has never published
what is needed to make non-Sun JVM's serialization interoperable with
Sun's.  This information is just not available.  Until Sun makes it
available, interoperability with Sun will remain an unfulfilled wish.

I should note that we put some serialVersionUID in classes already
(that was before I realized what is going on...), but they should be
removed because they fake interoperability where there is none.

In particular, adding Sun's serialVersionUID to Kaffe's hashtable
makes no sense whatsoever.  We might be more lucky with such classes
as Integer, Long, and so on.  If someone can provide experimental
results that would show that adding Sun's serialVersionUIDs would
actually make those classes interoperable, we could add them.
It would still be a gamble.

	- Godmar